On Teaching and Talent

Figure 1: Sullen Joseph Morgan doesn't give a shit about TALENT. He only wants to know if you've got the determination to create. "Well do ya punk?"

Over a decade ago, I decided to get my teaching license. Poetry was great and all, but I wanted a job with benefits. I wanted health insurance. I wanted to earn more than five bucks a poem. I wanted to have a skill that the marketplace would reward...by at least more than 5 bucks a poem.

So I got licensed to teach Spanish to grades 7-12. That license has lapsed, of course. I will never teach Spanish again, which is fine with me. Goodbye, verb conjugation. Goodbye, weekly vocabulary quizzes. Goodbye, reading 'culture reports' on students' visits to Chevy's Fresh Mex. I will never miss any of that shit.

Thankfully, all the same pedagogy applies to teaching writing; organizing a class, deciding how download information, planning activities, assessing student needs.

I teach at the Loft Literary Center in Minneapolis. At the Loft, they call us Teaching Artists. This embarrasses me. I think of 'artists' as primarily visual. And I don't think of teaching as artistic, really. Though it is, I guess. There's an art to it, but mostly it's an art assembled of knowledge of brain science, psychology, public speaking, etc.

The 'art' I use in writing a story is very different than the 'art' of creating a class.

ANYWAY. The point of this post is to address the issue of talent. My students are all teenagers. And they are preoccupied with talent. Do they have it? Will they have it? If they have it, will they get published? How do they get published? How soon do I think they'll get published?

All this anxiety. It makes me sad. I want to say, Wait. Sit down. Relax. Life is not all about grades and judgments. 

I want to say, Go learn other stuff. Go fall in love. Go get your heart broken. Go fail at something in a spectacular way. Become an expert in something weird, like mycology or stardust. Go meet a bunch of strange fucked-up people. Go travel to someplace you've never visited.

I want to say, Talent, Schmalent. Would you write even if no one read your writing? Would you write even if you never published anything?

I write because it's the one thing I do that makes me feel like myself. Like time is stopping. Like time doesn't matter. I have written since I was able to, in diaries and journals. I wrote zillions of unfinished stories when I was young. I tore them up. I have tons of unseen poems on my hard-drive. I wrote lots of hand-written-and-mailed-letters; now I write lots of emails. I write blog posts. I write essays that no one ever sees. I can't stop doing this. I never want to, either.

In the face of such preoccupation and obsession, who really gives one fuck about talent?

The question shouldn't be about talent. The question should be, Am I obsessed enough with writing to do it for the rest of my life, regardless of kudos, acclaim or recognition?

STFU, Prudes, Part I

Figure 1: Enjoy this, prudes! I know I certainly do.

I read this awesome post  by Kelly Jensen of Stacked Books about female sexuality in YA literature. Which made me happy (and not just because it mentioned my book. Though that never hurts.)

Then I read this, and, though it turned out to be a terrible and fateful choice, THE GODDAMN COMMENTS.

Then I had the Killing Feelings, as my sister calls them.

A couple of notes, ripped from my Twitter Feed:

• Saying something is 'inappropriate for teens' means I will automatically hate you/your words until given evidence to contrary

• Like 'heck' and 'dang,' the word 'inappropriate' is a signal that the speaker has their ass all clenched up about sex in some way

• The notion of shielding kids from sex is tiresome. Doing so says more about the shielder than about the needs of the kids

• Further, when we're talking about fiction, this statement also signals some squeamish sensibility: "Sex is only okay in a story if the story calls for it." 

• Why sex has so many fucking fences around it, even when we're talking about motherfucking BOOKS, is mind-boggling to me.

• Here is my deep-down suspicion about the Eat Your Vegetables/It Must Be Appropriate/Fit The Story sentiment. I believe that this comes from people who have problematical sexual issues themselves. Who lack imagination in all ways, not just in bed, and who perhaps have been hurt romantically or abused physically or manipulated emotionally and so cannot fathom anyone having recreational/pointless sex. I get all those personal issues. I really, really do. I'm not minimizing them. Everyone you meet is carrying a big burden, etc. I KNOW.  But do we have to let those people dictate what's expressed about sex in our culture? Do we have to listen to their opinions solely? Why do they seem to hog the fucking microphone all the time? 

They shouldn't. And further, they should shut up and listen for once. Hence, my new Tumblr. Which is open for submissions starting now.

On The Goddamn Weather

Figure 1: My backyard, five million years ago when we first moved in. It is hard to find pictures of sunny weather, did you know that? Now you do.

When I was twenty, I went to study abroad. It was my last year of college. I was going to central and south America to do an Urban Studies program. I didn't give one shit about Urban Studies. I just wanted to improve my Spanish and get the fuck out of Northfield and move on after a kind of icky break-up with a long-term boyfriend.

The first part of the trip was like some kind of test. We were in Guatemala, in the Altiplano, and I got sick. Everyone got sick. You kind of learned to be sick in another country, in all the unpleasant ways that can bring: on an overcrowded bus, in a restaurant, in a hotel with a communal bathroom and newspaper for toilet paper. I got elevation sickness, I was tired, I didn't know anyone. I got fleas; I swam in Lake Atitlan each morning to drown them. I boiled my laundry. I lost 15 pounds. It was kind of insane.

So by the time we left for the second part of the trip, in Bogota, Colombia, I was pretty battle-hardened. I ended up living with a family in a gated community in Bogota. Everything's gated in Bogota. But still, it was a cake-walk. It was lovely. There weren't usually chickens on the laps of people taking my bus to university every day. My host mother put an ashtray in my bedroom and ironed my socks and underwear. I walked every day to the same cafe after school to eat empanadas and smoke cigarettes with my classmates. After dinner with my host family, I'd go down to the corner store and drink a beer on the curb, bringing the glass bottle back to the shop keeper when I was through. I did Neruda translations with a Literature professor in her apartment every Friday in downtown Bogota. Things were great.

But I couldn't really get into doing any work. Because the weather never changed. It was always sunny, always in the mid-60's. The leaves didn't turn. Every afternoon it rained, sending us indoors for a few hours, but that was as prohibitive as the tropical climate got.

That was the first time in my school career that I didn't do any work and I didn't really care. I didn't want to do anything academic. I wanted to drink rum and lemonade. I wanted to go bowling in the Bogota Mall. I wanted to dance like a dumb gringa in the Zona Rosa. I just didn't give a fuck.

This is all a long-winded way of saying that I'm stuck in Minnesota for life. I don't think I can ever move any place where the sun shines indiscriminately and the weather is fair and temperate. I might be as mindlessly content as can be, but I'll surely get nothing done.

On Making The Fake People

Figure 1: This is my kid when she was two. This has nothing to do with writing, really, except she looks bossy.

I love this post by Christa Desir. Especially the parts about feeling inferior to other writers in terms of work output.

I love that she said she backs away from the computer and does something else when things are sucking.

I love that, merely because that's what I do, too. I love it when someone clearly articulates their experience and it's similar to mine. (Love that in life, love that in books. La la la...)

Here are some other confessions:

I don't write every day.

I barely have one idea at a time.

I confess to not understanding subtext.

I don't outline unless forced to by a 3rd party.

Sometimes I get overwhelmed with book talk or writer talk or shop talk and I want to put my fingers in my ears and remain this noob, this greenhorn who knows nothing.

When writing is going well, it makes me want to smoke lots of cigarettes. I don't smoke at the moment. BUT OH MAN. IF ONLY.

When I'm not writing, it's mostly because I don't know what the fuck to do next. Because I'm not ready.

When I'm ready, everything goes fast. Isn't that better? Wouldn't you rather wait until the last possible second before you crapped your pants? Versus going into the bathroom and PUSHING something out? Sorry to be gross, but that's what 'making yourself write' feels like to me. I'll do it when I'm goddamn good and ready, I think.

Sometimes, though, the answer is to write and see what happens, of course. So negate above statement.

I realize that I'm kind of a 38-year-old brat about this shit.

All my characters are me. Or someone I know or once knew. I don't make up anything original, really.

The moral of the story?  You have to figure all this shit out on your own. No one will ever care about it as much as you do. But there's not one way, really, to make up the Fake People. If you want it enough, you will do it.

And if you don't want it enough, then be glad. Because Christa also makes another good point: being a writer is 24/7. No weekends, no holidays. Those fucking Fake People don't leave you alone.

On Porn Part I

Figure 1:  An actual place in Minnesota, way up in the asteroid belt of the northern/western suburbs of Minneapolis

Saying you don't like porn is kind of like saying you don't like television.

For example, if you told me that you don't like television, maybe I'd press you with some follow-up questions:

"Really? None? Not even PBS? No America's Test Kitchen or Masterpiece Theater? Not even premium cable stuff like The Wire or The Sopranos? No Netflix Streaming? No clips from The Daily Show? No old episodes of I Love Lucy?"

Then you might backpedal and cop to watching basketball games ("only during March Madness") or episodes of Breaking Bad on your iPad. As if this doesn't, technically, count.

What I think you're really saying, though, is "I don't like shitty awful depressing demeaning television." Like reality TV or game shows hosted by Howie Mandel or anything about drunken numbskulls in New Jersey.

Or maybe you're saying, "I'm not one of those people who makes their television the centerpiece of my living room." Like, you don't own one, or if you do, it's hidden in a craftily-painted armoire or whatever.

Either way, numbskullery and/or gross aesthetic emphasis are the first images that pop into your head when you hear the word 'television' and that's why you hit the REJECT button.

Similarly, some people hear the word, "porn" and what automatically pops into their head is an image of some naked blond dimwit with pneumatic breasts and acrylic nails and a spray tan and a complete lack of body hair and personal agency. And whatever she is doing with her unlikely body is probably context-free and alarming in its excess and vigor and surfeit of body fluids.

To the "I don't like porn" people, all the above = porn. (Never mind that research doesn't support it.) It's kind of like saying that what's for sale at an airport bookstores = the best of modern literature.

The "I don't like porn" people remind me of people who say they don't like to read. I automatically think, "you just haven't found the right book yet." Same with porn. There exists something for every preference and niche in porn. Every body style. Every activity. Every taste level, every camera filter, every context or lack of context. I can understand being annoyed by having to wade through a whole bunch of crap that makes you shudder, yes. But dismissing 'porn' as a monolith is a mistake.

(Though there doesn't exist porn for people who don't want to look at sexual content, I guess. Sorry.)

Furthermore, assuming everyone involved in the production of porn is some kind of drug-addled, underaged, abused brainless runaway is also a mistake.

It is true that most people would not want to have sex while people are filming/watching.

It is true that most people would not want to have sex on camera for money. (Or even be able to do that! How many of us get aroused on cue? Or can act professional while stark naked and surrounded by camera equipment and strange people? Sex on film involves skills that most of us do not use in our bedrooms).

It is true that most people want to have sex in private situations, with people they love and care about, and aren't interested in the world seeing how they look naked and while in the throes of passion or whatever.

It is true that what is presented as 'sex' in porn is a facsimile of sex, generally. It is really happening, yes. It's 'sex' by definition. But not in the way that sex 'really happens' to people in reality, since most of us don't have sex for money or on schedule or in front of cameras and such. (Well, no shit. Don't look at art if you're concerned about Pure Reality. Go read Robert Boswell's essay "On Urban Legends, Pornography, and Literary Fiction" if you want to really get dorky and deep on this matter).

But to assume that the people involved in porn production and consumption are degenerate or exploited or somehow lesser is to lack imagination. And lack of imagination is more obscene to me than, say, Super Slutty Anal Gangbang 7, as far as I'm concerned.

Hey Lookit All This Stuff: Links of Note

Figure 1: gratuitous sleazy Norman Reedus image that has zero to do with the links of note

I rarely do this kind of post but felt it was necessary for reasons that aren't that interesting.

WRITING/BOOK STUFF

Writer James Lasdun's memoir about cyber-stalking reviewed in The New Yorker

Malinda Lo on my favorite topic of Sex & YA Lit

Chomp, chomp! An excerpt from Maggie Stiefvater's The Dream Thieves!

Kelly J. at Stacked talks about the reductive approach to YA lit

Why I Can't Wait To Read Bennett Madison's September Girls: The Forever Young Adult/Kirkus Review

Here is me at the Loft Literary Center's Writer's Block Blog blabbing about cliches & romance

THE REST OF THE WORLD

This mysterious rare disease where you grow another skeleton and how one woman dealt with it

Since distillation is a big topic lately in my home: Local 'Craft' Distilled Liquors Misleading

Masturbation at the root of all culture wars: Hugo Schwyzer explains

Paul Bloom makes a case against empathy in this essay titled "The Baby In The Well" 

Riot Grrrl Archives donated to NYU by Kathleen Hanna

(Now I know why I never do things like this. The Linking, IT BURNSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSS)

Carrie's Top 10 Most Hated Romantic Cliches

Figure 1: Shirtless lanky men walking through my kitchen in a towel? I don't have a problem with this.

Because you were all burning up to know them, right? Feel free to comment with your own...

1. Principal love interests meet by accidentally "bumping" or "crashing" into each other. Usually involves the spilling of books, bags of groceries or some other bulky parcel, and both parties becoming acquainted as they jointly collect up the dropped items.

2. Male offering a garment (coat, sweater, letter jacket, etc.) to female because she is cold or in distress. Often followed by male's comment of "You're shivering!" or "Your hands are ice cold!" 

3. Male sweeping up female and carrying her over threshold. Also includes any variation of this sentence: "He swept her up into his arms, saying, as she protested, 'Why, you're as light as a feather!'"

4. Any type of intimate musical exchange between principal love interests. Examples: piano or singing duets, acoustic guitar, window or balcony serenades.

5. Offers to slow dance that occur when there is no dance floor in sight. Often involves character asking "May I have this dance?" in affected, unnatural manner, in an incongruous locale (a living room, a swimming pool, the Brooklyn Bridge).

6. Marriage proposals that are made on bended knee and/or proclaimed loudly in public situations e.g. a big party, the Jumbotron at Wrigley Field. Use of middle names in either case is also wretched:      

        "Jennifer Maria Schmuckatelli, will you do me the honor of becoming my wife?"

        "Yes, Jonathan Jacob Jingleheimer Schmidt! Yes! I will marry you!"

7. Use of the phrase "table for two" when entering a restaurant. Further restaurant no-no's include: the man ordering for the woman ("The lady'll have the pasta primavera..."), violins serenading tableside, and characters buying dinner companions a rose from a roving flower salesperson.

 

8. Situations that force principal love interests into sharing a bed or sleeping quarters: 

   "There are no other rooms in the hotel!"

   "We are trapped in this remote cabin in the wilderness and a terrible blizzard is coming!"

   "Due to clerical error, we booked the same compartment on the night train to Katmandu!"

   

9. Conversations about circumstances and details surrounding a "kiss" between two parties. This can be between the principal love interests or between one of the principals and a rival:

  "Come on, Ramona! Did you even mean it when you kissed me the other night?"

  "So, you kissed Barbara, too? You just kiss every girl you meet, then?"

  "Oh, Enrique! That kiss with Larry didn't mean anything. With you, it's different..."

10. Slow disrobing from a distance between principal love interests prior to intimate contact. This only happens on television, because it looks better that way.
 

Sex in YA Literature: A Presentation

Figure 1: What many YA novels do, after pages & pages of dialed-up swoony romance, when the characters enter into sexual behavior

So Andrew Karre & I did a presentation at the Children's and Young Adult Literature Conference at The Loft Literary Center in Minneapolis this past weekend. The name of the presentation was "Sex in YA Literature: Choices and Consequences." We thought that name was dorky and serious both; also it is the title of my graduate thesis. So anyway. It was very fun and here are some things we discussed:

1. You can write YA that doesn't have sexual content in it. What you cannot do is write imaginable young adult characters without thinking about them with respect to sex.

2. Writing sex in fiction is a political act. Make sure a plurality of sides (at least two) are represented in your writing (as they are in reality) so your story doesn't swerve into realm of sermonizing or propaganda. See Robert Boswell's essay "Politics and Art in the Novel" in his collection The Half-Known World for more on this.

3. Porn-on-demand is a reality for adolescents living in the internet era. Writing about internet-era adolescents means you must consider the role of porn in your characters' lives.

4. Depiction of seemingly banal mechanical sexual details can be frightfully interesting in fiction about sexually inexperienced people. That adolescence is about first experiences - first sex being the jewel in the crown of first experiences - is what makes YA as a genre so delicious and vital.

5. Recalling your own adolescent sexual adventures will make you cringe. Thinking about what you did, or didn't do, or how you did it wrong, or what you didn't understand, though, is the path toward creating  something that readers will find fascinating. STAY in the cringe-y spot when you're writing about sex. Many YA writers flee the cringe-y spot. This leads to a kind of wish fulfillment about adolescent sex - retconning a story with the adult writer's context and wisdom about sex, if you will - and does nothing to further the genre or tell a fresh story.

6. Adolescence, the notion of childhood innocence, and the concept of privacy are all relatively modern inventions. Reluctance to speak about sex or even expose children or young adults to sex has not always been the norm throughout human history. Also, teenagers have very little privacy in general, less now in the social media age. YA stories that feature long expanses in which characters have uninterrupted romantical sex are in conflict with this reality.

7.  And finally, a quote from David Sedaris that Andrew shared:

"You kids think you invented sex," my mother was fond of saying. But hadn't we? With no instruction manual or federally enforced training period, didn't we all come away feeling we'd discovered something unspeakably modern? 

More Than 13 Ways Of Looking At The Vampire Diaries Season Finale: "Graduation"

Figure 1: Alaric who is dead. Kinda. But anyway. I miss him. 

How can we care about graduation when nobody ever went to school?

Oh, Bon Jovi. Oh, Daytime Drinking.

"I should be upstairs grooming my hero hair!" - oh snap, Stefan

This whole 'I'm dead but I'm walking around' thing? Kinda negates the deadness part. Plus ghosts can eat/drink?

Um, so, who's this ex of Rebekah's and what's with his Romance Novel Costume?

What the fuck's with all the vengeance-having Irish brogue dudes?

God, I love Alaric. What a mistake to kill him. Or a brilliant move. Whatev.

The Romance Novel Guy is like a mix between Jacob in Twilight and Highlander.

Also, this shit Rebekah and Matt are talking about, about traveling? While he stands on the Bomb Suitcase of Death? Seems rushed/hurried/weakass.

Sire Bond. Emotions. Elena's Humanity. The Cure. YAWN.

Suddenly, Drunk Stefan is all snappy and rational.

"The Hunters are dicks." - Damon, who I love.

Still not understanding this weirdo ex of Rebekah's. I need more time to absorb what his deal is.

Do people really care that much about graduation? I spoke at my graduation and I didn't even care that much. Christ. Also, why does Stefan go to graduation? What's the goddamn point?

"Welcome parents...if there were any in Mystic Falls. But there's not...so..." - Principal Guy, who is also Bonnie's Dad, somehow? I have not been paying proper attention.

Has someone made a supercut of all the times Damon's been staked/shot/killed?

Don't you wish Lexy and Alaric could be everyone's mom and dad?

OH MY GOD KLAROLINE THAT IS THE BEST EVER

I kind of feel like Elena/Katherine are doing all the acting in this episode and everyone else is just reading their lines. Okay, except for Alaric. And Stefan. And Lexi. And Klaus.

Okay, what I'm saying is that Bonnie and Damon and Matt and Rebekah are phoning it in, okay?

Can you imagine Stefan in Portland?

Should I feel bad that Bonnie's dead? Nobody's really ever dead on this show, though. She shoulda timed it better so she and Jer coulda made out amidst all the Yankee Candles, though. Dummy.

I don't know what's going on re: Elena/Katherine/Stefan/Shadow Selves/Silas. But I hope Matt finally gets some already.

Dunno if I'll watch this show next season. My Give-A-Damn is busted on the whole.

Adrian's Rules Part I

Figure 1: Shade Tree Mechanic school in session.

1. No taking baths. Baths are for women and children.

2. Wicker furniture - wicker itself - is a terrible concept and must be disdained, rejected, smashed into matchsticks and set on fire.

3. "No, I'm not gonna put THAT on Facebook. Jesus."

4. Waiting For Guffman and The Office, e.g. movies/shows where the main entertainment is being made uncomfortable by someone's awkwardness = unwatchable.

5. Fancy lingerie is a stalling tactic unless it has a laminated manual hanging off the back of it explaining how to remove. Save your money, ladies.

6. No Def Leppard. Ever.

7. Carmelized onions are disgusting.

8. You have a piece of broken machinery? He has a sudden, intense interest.

9. The world is divided into people who break shit and people who fix it.

10. A fresh pack of brand new socks makes the perfect gift.

A Signed Copy of Sex & Violence

Figure 1: What my book looks like. In just two dimensions, mind.

Would you like to win something? A signed real-live copy of my book, Sex & Violence, to be precise?

Just go here and follow the directions.

And sorry in advance if you fall down the Tumblr Hole and get nothing done for the rest of the day. Tumblr does that to me, too; one must practice Constant Vigilance in the face of all that wretched fan fiction, shirtless Ryan Gosling photos and animated GIFs of Dr. Who. I know, pet. There, there. See you in six hours.

The Case of The Missing Librarian

Figure 1: My kindergartner, back 2007, when her school had a librarian. 

My daughter attends 4th grade in Independent School District #13 at a school called Highland Elementary.

Highland Elementary, like the other two elementary schools in this district, no longer has a school librarian.

Ooops, I mean MEDIA SPECIALIST. Whatever.

Pretty soon, there won't be paper books, either, as the district's nebulous plan is to somehow give all the kids iPads and then they will magically know how to read and find everything they might need to learn about ever, without help, except there are Technology Teachers now, I guess, who 'integrate technology' and also some lady from Scholastic, who will somehow 'assist' in purchasing decisions for books - hmm, I wonder from what publisher she will purchase e-books? - which will make all our students 21st Century Citizens, you see, hallelujah, world without end.

I emailed the superintendent about this last week. Waiting on her sure-to-be-scintillating reply.