let's talk about writing

I actually did have a celebratory cocktail (once i...

2012-05-30T08:06:43.987-07:00

I actually did have a celebratory cocktail (once it wasn't 10 am anymore). Alas, no paper umbrella was involved. My eye is twitching. Guess I should take a break from the machine.

You are a badass! All that in 2 weeks. Dear lord...

2012-05-30T06:41:32.845-07:00

You are a badass! All that in 2 weeks. Dear lord, woman, you need to lie down!!

Well, you need to lie down on a deck chair on the beach and have someone bring you mojitos with little umbrellas in them, but that was a given, right?

Congrats Suzy! Where's that pack of Marlboro Lights?

Oh no, Averil, my dear. Your husband is lucky.

2012-05-29T20:53:38.608-07:00

Oh no, Averil, my dear. Your husband is lucky.

Horny. My poor husband is exhausted. Congratulati...

2012-05-29T19:53:00.897-07:00

Horny. My poor husband is exhausted.

Congratulations to you, though I've probably said it before. The book sounds amazing and you're a fucking badass to have cranked it out so fast. I see some pony-shaped post-it notes in my future. (Who's the copycat now?)

What is it about us bracelet girls and the father-...

2012-05-28T11:01:18.108-07:00

What is it about us bracelet girls and the father-porn connection? Wait. Don't answer that.

I can't support a rating like that. For all th...

2012-05-27T21:07:50.858-07:00

I can't support a rating like that. For all the reasons everyone has already covered, I think it's better to leave those kinds of decisions up to the parent and the child. We were always more concerned about violence than sex when it came to what we allowed our children to access.

I was one of those kids who looked for the titillating books and other material. I also had the benefit of an older sister who had books like My Darling, My Hamburger and a couple of books published by National Lampoon that were full of "questionable" material.

However, since my father's taste in porn leaned more toward the raunchy and we knew where he hid it, I was just as likely to read Penthouse Forum as I was to read a Sidney Sheldon novel when I was 12.

That probably explains a lot.

"That's the beauty of the written word. I...

2012-05-24T08:43:19.267-07:00

"That's the beauty of the written word. It cannot proceed without a reader."

Yes. When my children were small I worried endlessly about this sort of thing. And I still believe in attempting to give kids a childhood – not the easiest thing in Vegas, with every other billboard advertising a strip club or raunchy topless revue. But in spite of the environment, all three of my kids are very steady, slow to leap into sexuality, easygoing. I think it's because we've let them find their own way into the world, by keeping adult topics within reach but not in their faces. Books are perfect for that. They only read what they're ready for.

Marilyn French's The Women's Room is that ...

2012-05-23T20:18:37.014-07:00

Marilyn French's The Women's Room is that book for me. The first time I read it was in high school. That and Erica Jong's The Fear of Flying. I read them both in the same summer between 9th and 10th grade and knew I wanted to be a writer before I read them, but they showed me the type of writer I wanted to be.
I have pictures of both women framed on my bookshelves. Have you read Erica's Seducing the Demon-Writing for my Life? I loved it (and now think I may go get it off my bookshelf and read it again.)

(and yep, VC Andrews...I can still remember the book club edition hardback we had sneaked into her room. Black jacket cover with the green vine and the attic window with the two haunting child faces.)

Oh my God. Remember Marilyn French and her "T...

2012-05-23T17:34:49.960-07:00

Oh my God. Remember Marilyn French and her "The Women's Room"? And Jacqueline Susann? And all those Playboy Party Jokes with the bonered-up Santa chasing the booby secretary around the desk?

And we ask ourselves why the Grey books are selling like rubbers at high school dance. Jesus.

C'mon Bracelet Girls. Let's get busy!

Any thoughts? Thousands!! The whole banning of b...

2012-05-23T16:34:13.462-07:00

Any thoughts? Thousands!! The whole banning of books and some "entity" thinking they need to control books by a numbers game is so ridiculous, I always wonder how it even comes up for conversation. Do these people not have other things to do?

Not only will all of the kids figure out how to read these books, even MORE of them will read it because it's forbidden. I mean, come on. Were none of these grown-ups ever kids themselves???

In my days, I remember GO ASK ALICE as my first forbidden, and then it was the V.C. Andrews books, which I absolutely devoured. But I was also: age 11, sneaking into Uncle Joe's room and spending time with his Playboys and Hustlers --- I loved those Honey Hooker cartoons! And by 13 I was reading my mother's Betty Friedan books. So I was pretty much a lost cause.

Flowers in the Attic! VC Andrews, right? Omg. Been...

2012-05-22T22:04:05.137-07:00

Flowers in the Attic! VC Andrews, right? Omg. Been there with those friends and that flashlight. God. Makes me goosebumpy with nostalgia.

during a sleepover at my next door neighbor/best f...

2012-05-22T21:53:43.342-07:00

during a sleepover at my next door neighbor/best friend's house during the fifth grade, we stayed up ALL night reading Flowers in the Attic with a flashlight after her mom had went to bed.

it still may be one of my most favorite books and i haven't read it in decades. just writing about it brings back the feeling i got reading such taboo material. at that time in my life as a reader it was...awe-inspiring. i couldn't believe someone could write such things---put stuff like that out into the world. i wasn't scared by the content, i felt excited by the idea that such stories even existed. ("what else was out there!?")

i love the idea of pushing boundaries. opening new worlds up to young adults through reading.

i like to believe that it's not music, books and art that corrupts our children, but misguided and uninformed adults. of course, my daughter's still reading Junie B. Jones, so what do I know. (very little)

Lyra! Thanks for your honest and thoughtful commen...

2012-05-22T20:28:06.260-07:00

Lyra! Thanks for your honest and thoughtful comment.

The thing is, you know your child, and you're best equipped to help her choose books that speak to her and meet her particular interests and enthusiasm, and it sounds like she's self-sensoring, which is, at the end of the day, the "wings" part of "roots and wings" so -- good job, mom.

The thing about blanket ranking that most rankles me, is it tries to apply an across-the-board categorical statement to a range of possibilities. What is mature subject matter, exactly? Is it the word "fuck"? Is it a sex scene? A kissing scene? A kissing scene with tongue? First base, third base? Is it a gun? Is it a knife? Is it War? Is it prostitution? Is it Cinderella's stepmother whipping her with a broom? Is it Der Struwwelpeter -- where a boy's fingers are snapped off by a tailor when he sucks his thumb?

When I was 13, I liked nothing better than to pull one of my Dad's Playboys off the stack behind the toilet. I loved reading the interviews with the Playmate of the Month, in particular, I was intrigued to know what these women considered "pet peeves." My second favorite books were his medical anomalies reference texts that I'd steal from his office. There were descriptions and pictures of testicular elephantitis and women with 3 breasts. Precocious kids will find inappropriate material regardless. Kids who aren't ready to push those envelopes will choose to read tamer books, or skip the parts that gross them out. That's the beauty of the written word. It cannot proceed without a reader.

Such great points. I always thought I'd be mor...

2012-05-22T19:30:06.336-07:00

Such great points.
I always thought I'd be more like that until my oldest. I'm so torn between my dyed-in-the-wool belief in freedom of bookreading (is that Amendment 4 or 5?), but some of the subject matter is just too much for sensitive kids. I don't have a problem with language at all, but especially with a circumspect kid, I worry that she won't have the tools to process the info and won't ask. Therein lies my dilemma. Nothing freaks me out more than a group of god-knows-who getting together and rating books, yet I'd love a clue as to what's in it without having to read every single book out there before her. Plus, I don't want her to feel I'm censoring her, yes? I mean, I was reading Stephen Kind and Danielle Steele at her age. But I was such a different kid.
We've worked it out now because some of the more adult YA (I'd put them at 15 and up for a kid like her) she's read and put down herself because she was frightened by the subject matter, paranormal, etc. I could care less about the sex, it's just the violence that I don't want to subject her to until she deems she's ready.
What's a mom to do?
-Lyra

Hey there Master Solomon. (Your name is scarily cl...

2012-05-18T14:57:13.106-07:00

Hey there Master Solomon. (Your name is scarily close to "salmon"). Yes, dear Brady, the artsy sister. She's in for quite a lot of punishment...

But, things turn out okay in the end. Promise!

Just took a glance. Very nice (although, the Kand...

2012-05-18T11:18:24.480-07:00

Just took a glance. Very nice (although, the Kandinsky kind of threw me, a little; I'm more attracted to his later works, with the straight lines and circles). The salmon are haunting. I'll never view them the same, when I take a delicious bite. Yum. You're wicked toward your little artist. Congratulations, again, and chow, for now.

And the other prominent "who knew" word ...

2012-05-18T10:04:25.701-07:00

And the other prominent "who knew" word is know. What does that say about my inner YA? That I'm a know-it-all at heart? (Or is it fallout of first person present tense--things to scrutinize during draft 2)

So, just for the fuck of it, I put a little page t...

2012-05-18T09:41:48.759-07:00

So, just for the fuck of it, I put a little page together on my website. (Think of it as a fetus announcement--it's one of the dangers of being in the web biz. It's very Field of Dreams, you know?) Take a look >> http://www.suzyvitello.com/books/raising-cheer/

Congratulations! I wish I had kept track of how m...

2012-05-18T09:40:28.928-07:00

Congratulations! I wish I had kept track of how many pounds of chocolate I consumed...

Laura, that's so funny that you pointed that o...

2012-05-18T09:26:16.626-07:00

Laura, that's so funny that you pointed that out. I was sort of horrified when I realized that. Like, I want to go through it and exchange it for, like, other, smarter words.

I actually am starting to worry for Averil's h...

2012-05-18T09:25:03.475-07:00

I actually am starting to worry for Averil's husband. All those insider references he'll be in the dark about. Of course, maybe I'm projecting. Maybe he's one of us too! Maybe he's August!

i try not to turn too terribly green with envy abo...

2012-05-18T08:35:54.299-07:00

i try not to turn too terribly green with envy about things...but, hot damn, i wish i could be at every single coffee/dinner/brunch/whatever when two or more of us meet up.

(of course, i do believe that all of our powers grow stronger when two or more of us are within whispering distance.)

Only 70 days; that's amazing. Congratulations!...

2012-05-18T08:13:50.074-07:00

Only 70 days; that's amazing. Congratulations! And I love that the word "like" is featured so prominently in the Wordle. Is that because it features so prominently in the cheerleaders' speech patterns (I kind of hope so) or for similes, or both?

No hurry up and get yourself a drink.

I'm so glad you two are getting together --- c...

2012-05-18T07:16:19.443-07:00

I'm so glad you two are getting together --- can't wait to hear all about it. Cheers, Suzy!

Well, Averil and I just might do that! We'll b...

2012-05-17T22:34:20.388-07:00

Well, Averil and I just might do that! We'll blow up cardboard replicas of the rest of you and sit them around the table.
Whatcha drinking?