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I was at the dance studio today when word came in that House of Dance was named a 2009 Bank Street College of Education Best Children's Book.

I am, of course, entirely grateful. House joins books written by some of my literary heroes and heroines—Sharon Creech, Jane Yolen, Louise Erdrich, Avi, Neil Gaiman, and Mary Engelbreit, among others.

New: I close the day with these words from dear Priya, about Undercover.

The Undercover paperback is due out in a few weeks, and it arrives with extras—Elisa's story moved forward in time and documented with her newest batch of poems.

I invite you to watch the trailer, here.

Well, because it's funny, and because it's my blog, and because if Paul Krugman can blog six times a day, maybe it's okay if I blog twice, but:

Some of you have asked about those shoes I bought in Atlantic City. The ones I danced around in after getting some nice publishing news.

It's this very pair, photographed against a black tango dress. Also bought yesterday. Also silky, and sleek.

Because, while it is true that I was the kickball queen when I was a kid, that my high school years were filled with guys who buddied up with me (and saved their flirting for others), that I wear lousy, ripped jeans when I'm out with my Sony digital, and that the running joke during a recent Friday night dance party was that the only way I'd get a man to dance with me is if somebody paid the poor fool for the favor (thanks to all who contributed to the dance-with-Beth fund), I do, every once and while, like to be a girl. A real one, with real shoes.

Like these.

You have not forgotten dear Presenting Lenore, who taught me the zombie chicken dance (a number I performed for that star of ballroom dancing stars, Jean Paulovich, last Thursday; he was impressed indeed). Who makes me smile at many an odd early-morning hour with her unstintingly opinionated posts. Who takes me back to high school days and academic bowl life, though let us be clear: Lenore made her high school smart team because she was actually smart; I made mine because I had the smartest brother in the entire school (the guy was a stand out everywhere he went—high school, Princeton, Stanford), and people assumed I'd have at least a fraction of his brain matter. (They were wrong, I tell you, wrong! They should have seen the difference in our eyes—his brighest blue, mine hazy green.) Who assures me that sushi can be found in Germany (a relief) and that I can (at my old age) still adopt a cat so as to be more like her.

In any case—that Presenting Lenore.

Lenore has a review of Undercover up on her site right now, and let me tell you all one thing: I'm exhaling mightily over here. Lenore has the toughest of tough standards, and she loves highly plotted tales. I'm just so relieved that she found, in Undercover, a character to remember her former self by. I'm grateful, hugely, that she had such nice things to say.

I bow my head.

Last fall, I received a note from Lynn Levin, the executive producer of The Drexel InterView, who was inviting me to spend some time in the company of Dr. Paula Marantz Cohen, the popular author and Drexel University Professor of Literature. Would I join poet Gerald Stern, Chuck Barris, Craiglist's Craig Newmark, astronomer Derrick Pitts, Philadelphia Inquirer publisher Brian Tierney, social critic Steven Johnson, and others in the Season Six line-up of interviewees, she wondered. I said yes, but of course.

(Then worried for days about lack of appropriate wardrobe.)

In early October, on the second floor of a fabulously ornate 19th century building, Paula and I spoke of many things. Of the writing heart, of a career (my own) that has moved from poetry to short story to memoir to poetry to history to novel and back again to short story and poetry (and what, you ask, is this blog? A bit of everything, I guess, and too much of all, as someone just told me). The genesis of Flow, my autobiography of the Schuylkill River, was discussed, as were my three young adult novels to date, Undercover (soon to be released in paperback), House of Dance, and Nothing but Ghosts. If memory serves, we also discussed my short story, "The Longest Distance," soon appearing, along with work by An Na, M.T. Anderson, Chris Lynch, Jacqueline Woodson, and K.L. Going, in the HarperTeen anthology No Such Thing as the Real World. Young adult literature—where it came from, where it's going, what it might someday be—was very much on our agenda.

Lynn (a poet whose work you should seek out) has just written to let me know that that conversation will premiere this Tuesday, March 31, in the Philadelphia area at at 8 p.m. on DUTV (Comcast channel 54; in West Philly 62), then air four more times that week at 10 a.m. (Wed, Sat, Sun, and Mon). On April 5, it will air again on MiND (formerly called WYBE) at 10 a.m. In subsequent months, the interview will be available in other cable markets across the country.

I invite those of you who have the time and interest to listen in.

All right, so. I had a little blog something to say about outlining earlier today. I said—nay, I announced!—that I don't rely on this time-honored tool in my own writing process. Which is to say only that the outline does not work for me, but it works impeccably for others.

I don't use outlines because I'm weird. C'est tout. Because (for me) the great pleasure of writing is finding out, getting shanked by surprise, stretching toward unanticipated connections. I feel boxed in and unhappy in the presence of an outline. I need to be allowed off the path. I need to stray awhile, go hunt down some details, find out what that character really thinks, which is tied to who that character really is, which is not something I will find in an outline. Outlines presuppose. They rein things in. They don't yield to me, and I need so much room. (Gosh, I'm demanding. Gosh, who can live with me, really?)

I'm writing toward meaning. I'm inside a mood. I know what I want a book to achieve, how I want one of my books to make a reader feel, what my book is remembering or honoring or sacrificing. Sometimes plot (so well facilitated by an outline) is a means to that end, but not always, at least not for me.

So what do I have, if not an outline, when I write? I have the landscape defined—the room with its deflated balloon or the olive groves or the outside balcony of the Main Exhibition Hall. I have the biographies of my characters. I have the sound of the last sentence in my head. I have an overriding idea about narrative choreography—the pitch points, the quiet stretch, the crescendo, the rattled keys. Beyond that, I let the book become itself. I am eager, every day, to go down and meet it. To learn where it might take me.

Writers who have achieved the sorts of things I can only dream of achieving use outlines. I'm not suggesting that my process is better than theirs. It just is what it is, and I'm too old now to change it. Too weird, but I think I've noted that.

All right, enough on this. Last Sunday, as I've mentioned, I met with a number of 13-year-old readers and their moms and we talked for several hours about Undercover. It was an interesting exchange, and I learned a lot (is there room for subtlety in novels? must we like each character?). Throughout this week I've learned even more from young writer/readers. I've learned from Maya and Priya and also The Curly Q and AyeCaptain about what makes a book work, or not.

Curly Q and Aye Captain just reviewed Undercover and had some intriguing and helpful things to say. I am, as always, so very grateful for the conversation that percolates here. For the enthusiastic embrace of the idea that there's a book out there waiting for us all.

I've mentioned a podcast recording of a one-hour dialogue I had earlier this week with that gem interviewer, Barbara DeMarco-Barrett. Our topics ranged from the crafting of authenticity in prose to the genesis of my involvement with young adult novels to the making of Nothing but Ghosts and Undercover (I read excerpts of both). We talked about what makes for good books overall. We spoke of how past awards, past seeming successes are, in fact, always in the past, and that every single day of writing feels brand new, raw, and uncertain.

If you can forgive the popped Ps of a long-distance phone conversation (I hope you can and will), I invite you to listen in here.

Confession: I have a really hard time reading reviews of my own books. Indeed, I have a hard time reading the books themselves once they're locked for good between hard covers. Like Michael Ondaatje and Tennessee Williams, I have the urge to nip and tuck right up to the very end. At readings I'll often find myself stopping mid-sentence, and reconsidering: What if I moved this semi-colon here? And: Do I need that adjective?

So I go along in this world, trying to write the best books that I can and hoping that those books will find their right readers. Good reviews are far from guaranteed. I write a certain kind of book. There are risks, always.

Tonight, I was moving through the blogs I love to read when I saw an image of the UNDERCOVER cover on My Friend Amy's blog. My heart skipped a beat, like my heart does. My Friend Amy, I thought. And then I held my breath, and read.

Amy does so much more—so beautifully—than talk about UNDERCOVER in this post. She talks about YA novels in general, and about her own high school career, and about a teacher she remembers. It's a charming, touching, and, to me, deeply moving, post, and I thank her so much for it.

(I'm breathing again.)

A footnote: UNDERCOVER is due out in May as a paperback "with extras." I describe just what those are in this earlier post.

There was hardly a soul in the restaurant last night by the time my husband and I made our way to it. The streets were thick with ice and the snow that had been falling all day long kept rising back up with the wind and snapping. I had my blackberry with me because I always do, because it is my one connection across hundreds of miles to my son; I want to be near if he wants to talk. And so there we were, and there was the blackberry, and there was cold outside and a certain emptiness in my heart—a sadness stemming from news encountered earlier in the day.

Toward the end of the meal (appetizers, only), that little red blackberry light went off, and I checked to see to whom it might belong. It was Little Willow, of all people, a forerunner blogger of forerunner bloggers, who was out there doing smart book talk in advance of most of the world.

Guess who has a book recommended in this month's issue of readergirlz? she wrote. You do! You do! The postergirlz picked UNDERCOVER as a recommended read, along with our main March pick, THE ADORATION OF JENNA FOX by Mary E. Pearson.

I try hard not to cry at things that are not life and death related, but no amount of resolve stopped my tears with this. Because who are those readergirlz? They are Lorie Ann Grover, dancer, writer, illustrator, thinker. They are Justina Chen Headley, former executive and now author of such supremely successful and lovely, intelligent books as NORTH OF BEAUTIFUL, her latest, which earned three starred reviews and is getting incredible responses across the blogosophere. They are Melissa Walker, and we all know Melissa—beloved author of the VIOLET series and fashionista, who reports on her Manhattan travels so that the rest of us can be voyeurs. They are Dia Calhoun, the acclaimed authoress, and Holly Cupala, whose first novel is due out in 2010. And in essential supporting roles there are those like Miss Little Willow herself, HipWriterMama (a blogger I admired for so long from afar, a writer, and interviewer extraordinaire), and the delightfully popular Miss Erin, rising actress and poet and friend (and daughter of sometimes actress, rising photographer, and always friend Sherry!).

They are, in other words, women I have long respected. Women who are out there making a difference with their voices and their opinions.

UNDERCOVER stands as a March pick among books that I'd be proud to be associated with on any day of any week: MEMOIRS OF A TEENAGE AMNESIAC, FRANKENSTEIN, GRACELING, NOT QUITE WHAT I WAS PLANNING: SIX-WORD MEMOIRS BY WRITERS FAMOUS AND OBSCURE, and WALDEN.

I don't know about you, but sometimes electronic hugs, as first delivered upon my heart by Anna Lefler, are not enough.

Still:

(((thank you)))

Perhaps because we here on the east coast have had a bit of a cold spell lately. Perhaps because the heating system in our old house went down a few months ago (and cannot be repaired til summer, leaving us with a patchwork of space heaters, leaving me endlessly bone-chilled, cold pounded, fractured), I keep thinking about my early days on ice skating rinks.

This was after I'd taught myself to skate on Boston ponds. After I'd told my parents that I wanted nothing more than blades and ice beneath my feet, that I might die if I didn't have this, that I might not grow up to be me. After Robyn Rock, the skating sensation of the Wilmington, DE, rink, came out one day during a public skate session (this being a few months post-Boston) and taught me to waltz jump for real, to rightly spin. This was after that, when I was skating early morning, late afternoon, most every day. It's those days that I've been thinking about lately.

Days when the cold was something I sought, I craved, when I craved that music playing. I wanted to float—forever, always. I wanted to leap and never land.

There are few photographs of me as a child. There are just a handful of me on skates. I have in my possession two. It seems right that they are imprecise, blurred through.

Moira Silva, the ALAN workshop moderator whose company I would have had the pleasure of keeping this past Monday at the workshop I never (thank you, Delta Airlines) got to, just sent along the most gracious note of understanding, and I am grateful. Had I had
the chance to be among her and my co-panelists, I'd have answered Moira's questions this way.

Clearly you have chosen sports as a point of engagement with young people. How did you decide to use this lever? (Was it a conscious decision or did it evolve as you wrote?)
I built the character of Elisa first; I lived in her head for a while. Since she is patterned after who I was years ago, I knew her heart, I knew what would heal her from all the hurt and isolation she was feeling. Skating—its lift, its flow, its speed, its way of making a skater feel graceful, empowered, beautiful...I wanted Elisa to have all of this. I want all young people to have all of this.

What point of engagement worked for you as an adolescent reader/writer? Who/what provided that for you?
Language mattered most to me—the song of it, the way it played on the page. I skated myself, choreographed some of my routines, and I always fell for stories that felt choreographed to me—bigger than plot, bigger than dialogue, bigger than technique. I fell for the emotive entangling work of F. Scott Fitzgerald.

As you write your sports stories, do you consider your audience to be both boys and girls?
I recognize that girls have been my primary readers up until now. I don’t write for them necessarily, but my books find them.

Can you describe a time when sports played an integral role in your life?
Sports are essential in my life. There’s a great deal of connection, for me, between the way a body can move or can be taught to move, and the way that words move across the page. I ice skated for many years, then joined the high school cross country, winter, and spring track teams, where I was a sprinter, high jumper, and long jumper and also a part of a relay team that went to states and to Jamaica. I played high school tennis as well, and when I went to Penn, I learned squash and played on the Varsity team. I was a tom boy through it all, always kicking and throwing the ball with guys. Now I am learning (always learning) ballroom dance, which is much more of a sport than one might at first think. And which requires better clothes than I own now or ever will own.

Readers have categorized your writing as sports stories; how else would you classify it?
I write about young people at turning points in a language-intensive way.

What have you hesitated writing about, or even eliminated? In other words, what negotiations have you made in writing for young adults?
I am always working against my tendency to play out a feeling or a thought too long, at the expense of plot. I try to speed things up more than I might otherwise, for other genres. By writing skating into UNDERCOVER and dance into HOUSE OF DANCE I was able to vary the rhythm and sound of the books.

Since our workshop theme is negotiations and lovesongs, can you describe a situation that a character of yours is trying to negotiate?
Elisa, my heroine, is writing love notes on behalf of love-struck boys when she realizes that she’s falling in love with one of her clients. It’s a conflict of interest, shall we say.

By using sports in your writing, what kinds of themes can you develop?
Pushing against the odds.

Can you tell us a bit of information about what you are writing on now?
NOTHING BUT GHOSTS is due out in June, and though galleys are already out, I’m still tweaking it in true Tennessee Williams style. I have a fourth YA book due out next February about a mission trip to a squatter’s village in Anapra, Mexico. I have a short story in a forthcoming HarperTeen anthology called NO SUCH THING AS THE REAL WORLD. I’m working on a novel that takes place in 1876 (in which there is rowing and some more ice skating).

Who has been the easiest character for you to write about? Hardest?
Ease comes with familiarity. All my characters are implanted with parts of me. I can move through them and walk with them once I know who they are.

How has the Internet affected your writing process and overall career as a writer?
My blog has brought me close to younger readers, helped me understand what is important to them and how they dream. It has also yielded friendships with adult readers and writers that I cherish.

Fourteen months ago, when I first went blogging, I knew nothing, I knew no one, I scratched about and made my way. I'd fall through the rabbit hole of GoodReads, for example, and trip up against some smart reviewers. I'd find a comment on one of my postings from, say, Miss Erin, and travel over toward her blog, only to encounter others about whom I would sigh to myself, Oh, wouldn't it be nice to know a little about them.

Hipwritermama was one such force. She seemed so smart. So, well, hip. She thought a lot about books—the ones she was writing, the ones she was reading. She took her time to say precisely what she thought and how she felt. When she disappeared at summer's end for a brief vacation she returned—refreshed, rejuvenated, ever thoughtful. I noticed this.

I dared, at last, to reach out to her. She took the time to come my own blog's way. She was generous, encouraging me on with a passage I was writing, or commenting on something I'd openly been struggling with.

http://hipwritermama.blogspot.com/

I learned, about her, that she lives where I once did. She helped me locate (for my memory was fuzzy) the pond where I taught myself to skate (a memory I borrowed for UNDERCOVER). We talked about cooking, about expectations, about raising children, and recently, hipwritermama, who is also known as Vivian, took the time—she really takes the time—to read my books and to ask me questions for the Winter Blog Blast Tour.

I'm not the only one on whom she has showered such attention. I stand in the privileged company of Melissa Walker, Mark Peter Hughes, and Wendy Mass. All of us together being featured among many other wonderful writers over the course of this coming week.

I'm looking forward to reading these interviews. I invite you to take a look at the full line up, which is posted on the fabulous Chasing Ray.

http://www.chasingray.com/archives/2008/11/2008_winter_blog_blast_tour_sc.html

It seems like decades since I wrote memoir, though one might argue (and indeed some have) that blogging is memoiring, too. I tussled with the genre, ultimately let it go, moved onto poetry, history, fable, and also the YA novels that I have been writing for HarperCollins.

What I have never relinquished, however, is my belief that memoir's highest purpose is to put into place, for all of time, the people, geographies, and ideas that have earned a permanent vessel. In Still Love in Strange Places, my third book, I wrote about my husband's birthplace, El Salvador—the wars, the coffee farm, the people of Santa Tecla, my marriage. I wrote and researched and photographed for more than ten years, and in the final weeks of my work on that manuscript, a terrible earthquake shook Santa Tecla to the ground. Still Love had become the vessel for that which was no more.

In my novels, I look for ways to keep the true alive as well. To celebrate an English teacher who mattered (Undercover). To honor a young man named Nick, whom I have watched grow up over these past 13 years (House of Dance). In a book coming out next June (Nothing but Ghosts), each important person bears the name of someone important to me—my nieces and nephews, for example, my editor, Jill Santopolo (whose doppelganger is actually a young, smart, patient, curly-headed blond named Danny Santopolo). In The Heart is Not a Size (which I've been editing of late), there is a young man named Drake, who is fashioned after K., the rising poet with the enormous heart whom I sometimes write of in this blog.

Our first responsibility is to readers, of course. But I have discovered that I write truest when I am writing from the truest corner of my heart.