Writing and Reading and Catching Up

Okay, it's been awhile since I've done a bloggy catch-up. I apologize. I actually have been reading lots of blogs, but I've found it difficult to comment because I'm so late to the game that everyone has already said what I want to say. I wish that I could just write "Yeah, what they all said" on the comments so you all know I've been to see you.

A few things...

1. Today is the LAST day for you to vote on the Band Camp contest. So go read all the hilarious entries and pick your favorite. Winner will be announced next week when I get back from LA.

2. Yes. I'm going to LA for the SCBWI conference this weekend. It may be the only chance I get to meet my Alaskan collaboration partner Jolene. My roommates/writer friends have dubbed it #BarCon. So yeah, if you're there and looking for me...you know where I'll likely be.

3. I've been writing a lot. Jolene and I finished GESTAPO. Sort of. It's with beta readers right now. As most of you know, this book has been the thorn in my side ever since it got to the quarter finals in ABNA. It's so very different now from then. We've written it so many different ways. Jolene has been really patient about all of it. This might be my last effort on this book. If it doesn't work, then I'll likely let it go. Evidently, I am slightly allergic to writing commercial fiction. I also started a new book that I wrote 50 pages of in 2 days. It feels like one of those books that will never be published, which I said about TRAINWRECK so that's maybe a good sign. It's probably the only true YA romance I'll ever write. And yes, it's a girl-girl love story.

4. TRAINWRECK edits start in the next week or so. I don't really know what that'll mean for me. I shall check in and let you know how it goes.

5. I'm reading my friend Holly's e-serial: KING SOLOMON'S WIVES: THE HUNTED. It's great. Part suspense, part historical. It's kind of like a woman's Da Vinci Code in it's complexity. But better because it's a serial and you get to vote on what you want to see more of in book 2.

And finally, the winner of THE BESTEST RAMADAN EVER is Golden Eagle. G.E. shoot me an email with your snail mail addy and I'll send you your book.

Now, what are you all up to? Writing? Reading? Any of you going to LA?

My kids judge YA books by their covers

So I don't know if any of you saw this, where a 6 year old judges books by their covers, but I thought it was pretty spectacular. It made me wonder what my kids would say about YA books. I originally started with about 15 books, but my kids have little patience and no amount of bribery was going to engage them so I stumbled through as many as I could. You will note that not all of them answered on each one. They kind of picked their favorites.

Also, I should caveat this by saying that my children are precocious readers. My boys have been reading since they were two and my daughter reads more books in a week than I do. So titles did factor into these books in all cases.

5 yr old-- "It's just what it says. It's about saving lives."
8 yr old-- "I think it's a true story."
10 yr old-- "It's about the girl on the cover and there's someone she loves and something bad happens to him or her and she has to save their life."

5 yr old-- "This book is about fighting."

8 yr old-- "I think it's about time travel, but I read the top part."
10 yr old-- "Well, if it's about time travel, then it's where this girl meets someone when she goes back in time, but she can't marry him or her because she's from a different time."

5 yr old-- "This book is about girls and lipstick, maybe not Barbies though."

8 yr old-- "A girl and a boy are friends and they discover something special."
10 yr old-- "It's about a girl who discovers a secret. Or maybe it's 13 reasons why we named our dog after this author."
5 yr old-- "Yeah, it's a book about the dog."

8 yr old-- "It's about a girl who is beautiful and dangerous."
5 yr old-- "And she has a lot of lipstick"
10 yr old-- "It's about a girl who would do anything to be beautiful."

5 yr old-- "It's about a girl who is sad."
10 yr old-- "It's about someone who used to have a privileged life and now she lost everything."

8 yr old-- "This one is easy, Mom. It's about a girl who lives in France who has a crush on someone."
10 yr old-- "Yeah, and it looks like it's a crush on a boy."









And finally, just for fun...

10 yr old-- "This book is about a guy who's a ghost."

On Vicarious Trauma

So most of you know I was a rape victim advocate in hospital ERs for almost ten years. That's a long time to be an advocate. There's a high level of burn-out with advocates who are essentially alone in ERs, serving on the front lines for people who have just had something horrible happen to them.

One of the things that we talked a lot about during that time was vicarious trauma. Basically, this is when the stories that you hear impact you deeply and you experience trauma yourself as a result. I think all of us experience this in one way or another during every day living. You hear things or people tell you things and it hits you very hard. With rape victim advocates, what makes this more difficult is that there's no distancing yourself from these victims. You don't just hear one story, you hear stories over and over again. With people who work with trauma victims every day, this is particularly grueling.

My friend Ally works with torture survivors. She has for almost twenty years. This is incredible to me because I can only imagine the amount of vicarious trauma she must have experienced. Ally doesn't watch sad movies. When I asked her about it once, she said, "It's just too much. I can't have all those feelings after work as well." Ally would also be the first to talk about how amazing the people that she works with are, how positive and resilient. I wish everyone could know Ally. She's amazing and formidable.

When I attended the survivor's testimonial writing workshop, it was pretty intense. Two days of survivor stories. Lots of vicarious trauma. And part of why I wrote TRAINWRECK was to be able to put those feelings somewhere.

But I didn't realize that writing this book would open another door. In telling this story and in being very outspoken about the issue of sexual assault, I have had so many people talk to me about their own stories. So many people coming forward with their truths. This is such a huge act of bravery and I feel so absolutely blessed to be the recipient of these gifts. I know how hard it is to tell your story and the fact that people are willing to tell me either publicly or privately their experiences makes me realize how glad I am that I wrote this book. Because if nothing else, this book was meant to open the door to people telling the truth about sexual assault. To let other people know that this can and does happen. To create change about how we discuss this issue. That there's really no such thing as a "good" rape victim.

There's a very good reason for rape shield laws. Survivors should be protected from having to tell their stories publicly. But that doesn't mean that they shouldn't be allowed to tell them in their own words if they want to. When we don't give people the chance to tell their truth, we silence them. We distance ourselves from the issue and make it about "them" instead of about "us."

You should read this post by Steph Campbell. It is all the reasons that I wrote this book.

And yes, this unexpected outpouring of people's stories has affected me. Parts of my heart crack open every time someone tells me what horrible thing happened to them. And yes, I'm not watching a lot of sad movies lately. I cry more than I have in a long time. I have to work very hard on self-care. But these stories are also incredibly healing. This choir of voices inside me makes me feel like we're getting closer to things getting better. That maybe by speaking out, we're inching closer to people reporting rape more, we're inching closer to changing the way that the media talks about this issue, we're inching closer to this not being a thing that happens to other people or just one person's problem.

So I'm grateful for every story I hear. I'm grateful people trust me with them. I'm grateful that people who have never spoken up before are now doing so. I hope that my book can continue that dialogue. At the very least, I hope my book makes people realize they aren't alone.