Lilith Saintcrow

Yeah, when you stumble to the front door to let the cats out (because, of course, they will DIE IF THEY DON’T GET OUT THIS INSTANT) and see the sunshine, hear the birds singing, and even the thought of a bowl of Cheerios is too much effort…

…then, my friend, you know you stayed up too late last night getting your heroine in trouble.

I used to be able to pull all-nighters and be fresh as a daisy afterward. Then I hit a long jag of nothing but all-nighters. (It’s called early parenthood.) And when I surfaced from that at 30 I found out I had lost that ability. My body says, “Stay up all night and expect me to work the next morning? HAHAHAHAHA! You’re joking, right?”

Of course, it could have something to do with me staying up to write fiction instead of getting into trouble myself. Perhaps my body would be happier if I was out dancing or something. I do miss dancing. However, I do not miss the boozed-up jerkwads or some DJ’s idea of “cool” music shattering my eardrums with feedback when all I want is a beat. Oh, or my ride getting drunk and leaving me stranded.

Guess I’ve just gotten old and boring. I’d rather be hitting 50K on the YA and getting my heroine shot. You know, doing actual work.

Guess this means I need to turn in my “cool mama” card. Where does one mail those things back to anyway? If I can’t find a mailing address I’m going to have to keep it and just impersonate a cool mama.

Yes, I’m in a silly mood today. Can you tell? Here, have my morning earworms: one is Cutting Crew’s “(I Just) Died In Your Arms Tonight” and the other? Murray Head’s “One Night In Bangkok.” The mashup inside my head is a thing of beauty and wonder, but I can’t share it because video and audio editing software is not jacked into my brain yet. Sorry. You’ll just have to imagine.

The Internet has been all over Roger Ebert’s deliciously cranky review of the new Transformers movie. His review actually makes me want to go see it MORE, because my complaint about Transformers 1 was “Less girlfriend, more FIGHTING ROBOTS!” I don’t want fricking plot in a Transformers movie, for Chrissake. I want ROBOTS. LOTS OF ROBOTS DUKING IT OUT. I want 99.9% PURE ROBOT BATTLE. Plot is for, you know, actual stories. Not for marketing machines built on a Hasbro line, for Chrissake. (Were Transformers Hasbro? I forget.)

Okay. All silliness aside, it’s time for me to make another lunge at finishing up this book. See you around, chickadees.

It is a known principle of cats that they need to be in the middle of anything you’re doing on the floor (or the table if you do not ruthlessly train them to stay off). The Princess and the UnSullen are realizing this as they play poker in the living room. (Someone bought a “marked deck” from the dollar store.) Our tuxedo cat is helping as much as he can between being picked up and put elsewhere. This amuses me greatly, the banter and abuse thrown at each other amuses me as well. The Little Prince is quietly blowing bubbles in the back yard.

The plum tree still has not bloomed. I am in an agony of anticipation.

It is a slow-starting day today. Sometimes I need a slow day in the beginning of the week to recover from the weekend. Yesterday’s roasted-chicken stew was awesome, but I kind of wish I’d made pizza or something easy. I love cooking but it gets time intensive seven days a week. (I could post the recipe, maybe tomorrow. If anyone’s interested.)

Today is the day when I start on the third YA. I have a hazy idea about it, and it won’t get any clearer unless I work on it. So, off I go. If I get, let’s see, 2K in today I will let myself go poke at the New Sekrit Project. That shoudl give me some oomph to get going.

Cross-posted from Deadline Dames, where there is a fiction contest and tips from a contest judge up this week. Go take a look!

Two quick things today, because there is a certain birthday party I must be prepared for. It’s not anyone’s birthday, but we’ve scheduled the party today, which works out well for all concerned.

Right now I’m reading John Ajvide Lindqvist’s Let the Right One In, the book the Tribeca-award-winning movie is based on. The premise is good, the story is tightly-interwoven and slow-paced but well done. There are things I don’t like about the book itself. Some of them are translation things, things that you can’t avoid with a book that’s been brought out of another language. Some of the others are stylistic, like the author’s apparent love affair with ellipses. I use too many ellipses myself–my beta has to ruthlessly step on their heads lest they breed–and I understand Lindqvist was trying to capture the way people really talk. That’s the trouble with dialogue. You have to walk that line between how you know people actually talk, with all the ums, ahs, and the things left unsaid, and balance that against what dialogue needs to be, a revealing and unfolding within the story.

It’s a hard act.

Which brings me to the intentional mistake. After you’ve been writing for a while (I want to say ten thousand hours, because I’ve read Outliers recently too, but maybe it’s between five and eight thousand) you start seeing the mistakes a little differently. Once you have the basics down and begin to have a good solid grasp of craft, then you can start breaking the rules.

Just like in life, breaking the rules to break them is a stupid kid’s game with unintended consequences. Knowing the rules and breaking them to effect is something else entirely. Stephen King talks about this in On Writing, one of the only two writing books I will ever recommend.

I am willing to put up with what I see as Lindqvist’s mistakes in this book because he has vouched in other ways that he knows the rules and he’s breaking them for a reason. The rest of the book is good enough that I can overlook the ellipses. There is a lesson in this. Readers are very forgiving if you give them a reason to be. Don’t abuse their trust, and they will follow you down the dark road of a book.

The other thing I want to talk about today is truth. Lindqvist’s book is not for the faint of heart or weak of stomach. Some of the main characters are children, but it would never be published as a Young Adult novel.

As a writer getting into YA now, I’m running up against some of the conventions of the genre. Well, not exactly conventions. I am running up against the laudable adult urge to protect the young, and the not-so-laudable urge to censor what is said to them.

In my house, we have a “reach it and read it” policy. If you can reach it, you can read it. If you can’t reach it–get a stepstool! I do not believe in censoring my childrens’ experience with the written word. Are there things I wish they wouldn’t read? You betcha. Do I put those books out of reach?

I do not.

Instead, I keep track of what the kids are reading, and I talk to them about it. The conversations are alternately funny (like when Astronomy Girl ran across a fade-to-black sex scene in a book and asked me what “orgasm” meant) and terrifying, like when the UnSullen was reading Food of the Gods and started asking me about hallucinogens.

Ah, the joy of parenting.

In each case I firmly believe in telling the truth in the straightest, most age-appropriate, and simplest way possible. This is, I think, the best policy. (Obviously, or I wouldn’t be doing it.) The more armed with simple knowledge my young oes are, the less danger there is of them doing something stupid. I mean, we all have lapses in judgment. That is not the exclusive province of the young.

But one is far less likely to have a stupid lapse in judgment if one has been calmly given straight answers. And kids who get straight answers, who know they can go to an adult and ask difficult, ticklish questions, are far more likely to check in when something happens they’re unsure of. Check in, that is, before the situation becomes an unholy tangle.

The best way to protect the young, then, happens to be not censoring the information given to them so much. Kids are smart and they love to learn (until the public school/jungle system beats it out of them, but that’s another blog post). They want to ask adults questions, and they want straight answers. A kid who doesn’t feel alone and adrift is a kid who is going to talk to someone before they go and do something silly, at least most of the time. Age-appropriate doesn’t have to mean “complete blackout of information”.

This is why I’m feeling okay and not so okay about my forays into YA. On the one hand, I feel like I have something of value to impart, a story to share with younger readers. On the other hand, dealing with a lot of forces who want kids kept in the dark about a lot of things–sex, drug use, violence, abuse–for a variety of reasons, whether to “protect” them or because of an adult’s profound discomfort with kids knowing about the darker things in life…well, it gets wearying. The fear in the publishing industry of being “too edgy” and setting off some of the more conservative elements in our society is immense. The writer gets asked to change things, to dial it back and not be so direct. Sometimes it’s necessary, sometimes it’s not.

There’s a fine line to walk there, too. You need to know when you’re too attached to something that doesn’t really move the story along. Conversely, you need to not give in when someone is asking you to bullshit for the sake of selling more books or not pissing someone off. The two are not mutually exclusive, and they’re hard to tell apart.

Telling the truth in this way is difficult. It’s dangerous. But I think it’s worth it. My kids are worth the truth. I think every kid out there is. It doesn’t mean I have to force the knowledge of the darker side of the world on them, but it does mean that I have a trust (I would go so far as to call it sacred) to tell the truth when I’m asked, and when the occasion calls for it.

Why else would I do this job?

Yes, happy, happy Monday–a day full of bile. For yes, Sir Pewksalot is living up to his name. I think it’s a combination of a little bit of a cold plus his already nervous-stomach.

On the bright side, we’ve caught everything in large bowls (which we are well-supplied with) and I have plenty of help home today. But oh heavens, waking up to puke kind of puts a damper on the day.

Yesterday we had the shoot for my author photo. I was made up and primped and actually felt kind of pretty, so we’ll see what happens. Cross your fingers for me–but you don’t have to keep them crossed for the week it will take for them to arrive. A couple seconds should be all the luck I need.

The Little Prince is sitting in front of some cartoons, all bundled up and with a bowl on his knee, with some toast and juice. Hopefully things will calm down a bit. In the meantime, have a happy Monday.