The Public Eye

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We all live in glass houses in this digital age.

I write about this loss of privacy in my YA fiction, and the idea just won't stop cropping up in the real world. Athletes and celebrities seem to take the brunt of the public eye, but they're not the only ones anymore. It spans such a huge range of situations, from the embarrassing to the criminal.

I can't help wondering what it will mean for our society in the long run. Will it make us better, eventually, knowing that someone's always watching us? Or will it just expose more of the darkness we already fear exists?

The ugliness weighs on me, as a woman, a mother, and a Christian. We have access to multitudes of information and countless people in the palm of our hands, and what do we do with it? Threaten and intimidate? I'm not sure what's worse, the hatred or the indifference.

I don't have any real answers. But over the next few weeks, I'm challenging myself to use this technology that's supposed to make our lives better and easier for something good. I hope you'll take on that challenge, too.

Music for today: Lightening Bolt by Jake Bugg

Remembering Why

I had this great conversation with a teenager a few weeks ago. He was a stranger to me, and circumstances just happened to have us sitting next to each other. He started by asking me what I was reading. (It was Siege and Storm by Leigh Bardugo.) I gave him a quick summary, and he shared with me how he used to enjoy reading so much, but things were just too busy between high school and his job to read for fun anymore.

He was a non-native English speaker, and it was learning to enjoy reading that brought the language alive for him. Any guess what the book that hooked him was? I wasn't surprised when he said Harry Potter, because I witnessed that same magic with my students in middle school year after year. My first revelation that day was a sense of regret that our education system hasn't picked up on this trend. In elementary and middle school, we encourage kids to read whatever they enjoy, to foster a love of books. We are dying for kids to read for fun. But in many high schools, the emphasis shifts. I think we'd do better to support reading as a source of entertainment instead of just work.

Next he asked me if I was a teacher. He said I just had that look, though I think it was more my enthusiasm for talking about Harry Potter, and books in general, that gave me away. So, here's the thing. I told him I was a teacher, but I didn't tell him I'm a writer. (I'm embarrassed to say I didn't relish the follow-up questions that come with that.) He could've asked more about teaching, or even stopped talking to this mom-aged lady, but next he asked me what I'd wanted to be when I was his age.

I can't remember anyone asking me that question in my adult life. So I told him. I told him how I'd always loved reading. Though there were many things I'd wanted to be throughout my childhood, when I was eighteen, I wanted to work in publishing as an editor. It was the only way I could see where reading could be my job. I didn't think I had the creativity to write, but I'd known I wanted to work with books. Teaching did let me do that, but not in the way I'd imagined.

It's taken a long and winding road, but I am finally following that dream. I'm really glad we crossed paths that day, because he reminded me why I'm doing what I'm doing. I love writing, and I'm proud of the novels I've completed. But whatever the outcome of my own writing career, joining this community, through SCBWI and social media, has allowed me to practice exactly what I wanted to do. Supporting writers. Reading books on the front lines of the industry through CPs, betas, and ARCs. And helping, even in some small way, books come to the shelves that bring our language and our world alive for young readers.

Music for today: Five Seconds by Twin Shadow

  

How is it possible that this is my first post of 2012? Is it just me, or is this year already flying by? I don't want to talk about reflection on the past year (been there, done that) or resolutions for the new one (already broken). Instead my first post of the year is about watching the world change before your eyes.

I think quite a bit about how the world will be different when my children are adults. I just finished reading Ally Condie's Matched, which I highly recommend, and I hope that my boys don't live to see those changes in our society. We have many close friends who have moved away or will be moving away soon. When I was young, these kinds of goodbyes were final; it would take some kind of serendipity to meet up at thirty years old with someone you knew for a year in first grade. Of course now, if you remember that friend's last name, you can look her up and try to reconnect.

Though my boys are young, before I know it they will have mobile phones and facebook and twitter accounts. They won't have to reconnect with old friends. They will always have these connections, if they want them, at their fingertips. I've enjoyed getting to know the kids in my younger son's kindergarten class. (If you want to see what a day with them is like, watch the 1990 classic Kindergarten Cop.) And just think, in a few years when I say, remember that cute little girl in your class who loved to do cartwheels? He'll say, sure, she lives in Orlando and she's an Olympic gymnast. I chatted with her yesterday.

Isn't it amazing how the world is growing larger and smaller all at the same time? Instead of a resolution, I'll end this post with a hope for 2012. I hope that this year, I will take advantage of opportunities to meet and learn from like-minded people, and that I will nourish relationships with all the people whose paths have thankfully crossed with mine.

Music for the day: Favorite cover of 2011, Mr. Little Jeans cover of The Suburbs

I've been a little absent from the Interwebs recently. It's easy to click and read with one hand, but more of a challenge to type comments or posts. I'll be back soon, with a slew of end-of-the-year book reviews, but I'm muddling through this post left handed to give a little personal update.

I am so blessed by my wonderful family and friends. This year I've met so many fun people in the reading and writing community, both in person and online, and I'm grateful to have you all in my life! I've been away from the keyboard because I had surgery on my right wrist two weeks ago, and my loved ones have really stepped up to take care of me. I'm doing fine; it was a minor thing that just happened at an inconvenient time.

A few things I've learned this December:

* I can eat, put in contacts, drive, text, and get dressed with my left hand.
* I cannot wash dishes with my left hand.
* Son #1 was amazingly non-whiny while he had a cast on his broken arm for ten weeks, when he was five years old.
* My husband does an amazing job taking care of our family.
* I'm still not used to Florida's 80 degree winters.
* The YA community is awesome, and not just because of the PHENOMENAL giveaways they've put on this month, but because they care about connecting with a network of brothers and sisters who will always remain teenagers at heart.

Merry Christmas everyone!

Music for today: My mom's favorite Christmas song, O Holy Night

Nothing makes me feel older than technology. Don't get me wrong -- I love it. I love unlimited information at my fingertips 24-7. I love my iPod, my phone, and my laptop -- I don't go anywhere without them. But I can remember what life was like before, and it seems like that wasn't very long ago.

I took a road trip to visit family last week. During the five hour drive, I flipped back and forth between satellite radio, which has three stations directed specifically at my musical tastes, and my entire personal music collection on my iPod. I also talked to a friend on the phone via Blue tooth, and my boys watched two DVDs.

Not too long ago, radio signals would have faded from city to city. I would have listened to two, maybe three carefully chosen CDs. I couldn't have talked on the phone because I wouldn't have had reception. My boys would have cried and asked 100 times, "How much longer?"

It is not lost on my that I'm writing a post on technology on a website it took me less than an hour to create. The Internet has flipped the switch from science to magic; it can actually read my mind. A few days ago I typed in the search engine "what to get," and by the time I got that far, the engine had already provided a list of ten options to finish that sentence. More amazing is that my exact question was the fifth down on that list -- "what to get an 8 year old girl for her birthday." I'm sure my niece will like the gift I picked out for her because three different websites told me she would. When my older nieces were that age, I spent hours browsing stores. I doubt I ever picked out what was cool to them.

That tangible difference, the memory of how things used to be, makes me feel my age more than my stiff knuckles and grey hair.

Writing update: I have started a new short story. I plan to finish it this week, but I am faced with the classic dilemma. Do I create a story arc for my characters, or do I let them play around with each other and see what happens?