January in News

The American Library Association released its 2011 best-of lists, and Huntress made it onto three of them! It’s on the Best Fiction for Young Adults, the Amelia Bloomer Project List, and is a Top 10 book on the Rainbow List.

Huntress was also honored by the Chicago Public Library, which included it on their Best of the Best Books for Teens.

And while this happened yesterday (so technically in February), I’m listing this here anyway: Huntress is also on the 2011 Locus Recommended Reading List in the YA category! (And that’s an awesome list in general if you’re looking for sf/f to read, so check it out.)

As I said yesterday on Twitter:

January in Writing

I spent all of January working on the rough draft of the sequel to Adaptation. Every day that I work on the sequel, I’ve been recording my progress on Tumblr with a photo and a word count. Here’s one of my favorite writing days:

And here’s where I was, as of February 1 (I couldn’t post on Tumblr on Jan. 31 because Tumblr was down):

And, yes, those photos mean something to me. If you want to see what other photos I come up with , feel free to follow me on Tumblr.

January in Reading

Last month I read an amazing novel that I’m going to tell you a lot more about soon. For now, I’ll just say this: I will read anything that Sarah Waters blurbs, and this is what she said:

“Danforth’s narrative of a bruised young woman finding her feet in a complicated world is a tremendous achievement: strikingly unsentimental, and full of characters who feel entirely rounded and real. A story of love, desire, pain, loss—and, above all, of survival. An inspiring read.” — Sarah Waters, author of THE LITTLE STRANGER

This book comes out next week! I strongly suggest you go and get yourself a copy:

B&N | Amazon

January in Photos

Last month I went out to Point Reyes for a lunch of barbecued oysters (yum) and a hike along the coast. A lot of cattle graze out at Point Reyes, and while there are plenty of present-day, active ranches in the area, there are also some abandoned, ruinous ones. I love those the best. Here are some photos of an old, abandoned ranch on Point Reyes:

Inside the old barn

Light through the boards

Hay bales

Dairy, abandoned

In the distance, the sea

All in all, a very good start to 2012.

“I am writing a short story about a lesbian main character … and almost had it finished when I had a panic attack. I was at a conference talking about my story when a lesbian told me she would never take it seriously because I wasn’t a lesbian and I can’t know what that feels like. But to me that love is love and normal and just like love between anyone else except for that one guy back home and his sheep. I don’t want to do this wrong. I want their love to be the reason my MC survives this ordeal but I don’t want to offend either. What can I do?”

First off, I think it’s great that you’re writing a story about a lesbian character, and that you understand that love is love.¹ That’s wonderful!

Our girl Sappho

As for the comment made by the lesbian at the conference, well, some lesbians are going to think that way, and they have every right to. For a long, long time (virtually all of history, except for Sappho!), representations of women who love women were made by people who were not women who love women. Some of those representations were perfectly fine; many of them were (and still are) offensive or badly done.

Now that we live in a time period in which lesbians are more freely able to represent themselves — in books, art, the world at large — I think you can understand why many lesbians might prefer to read/watch/experience stories about lesbians created by lesbians. They may in fact be more accurate in their representations, or they may simply seem that way because the reader/viewer knows the creator has been through it, to some degree.

Also, there’s a matter of pride. Sometimes we like to support our own kind.

BUT: Representations of lesbians are not only done well by lesbians, and I think it’s a bit limiting to believe that. I’ve certainly read books about lesbians that were written by non-lesbians, and they’ve been great! Most recently, I adored Tripping to Somewhere by Kristopher Reisz. It wasn’t until someone mentioned (on Twitter? I can’t recall) that she didn’t usually read books about lesbians written by men that I even thought about the fact that Reisz is a man.

Obviously, sometimes men get it so, so wrong when it comes to lesbians. Sometimes straight women get it wrong, too. But that doesn’t mean that (1) you will get it wrong; or (2) lesbians always get it right.

It’s a good thing for a writer to be concerned about getting it right when s/he is writing about a group of people s/he is not part of and which has historically been oppressed. That is the first step in the  direction of getting it right.

What else can you do? Well, you might read “Transracial Writing for the Sincere” by Nisi Shawl, which is a great primer on writing about “the other.” You can also read Nisi Shawl and Cynthia Ward’s Writing the Other: A Practical Guide.

And, you probably know this already, but do your research. You can start with reading about queer people. Take a look at my series of posts on Avoiding LGBTQ Stereotypes. Go to the library and read up on LGBT history and culture. Go online and get lost in AfterEllen or AfterElton, where you’ll get a massive dose of contemporary pop queer culture. And, of course, talk to your queer friends. You might ask one of them if they’re interested in reading your story, just to gut check whether you’re “getting it right.”

And remember: Every queer person has a different life story — just like every human being. If you think of your character as a human being first, that’s a great place to start.

1. No comment about the sheep!

2012 Best Fiction for Young Adults — “The books, recommended for ages 12-18, meet the criteria of both good quality literature and appealing reading for teens. The list comprises a wide range of genres and styles, including contemporary realistic fiction, fantasy, horror, historical fiction and novels in verse.”

2012 Amelia Bloomer Project List — Recommended Feminist Literature for Birth through 18

A Top 10 Selection of the 2012 Rainbow List — Recommended GLBTQ Books for Children and Teens

Thanks so much to all the librarians who read Huntress and supported it for these lists. I’m very honored. And congratulations to all the other fabulous books on these lists!

UPDATED 1/31/12: I just found out that Huntress also made it onto the Chicago Public Library’s Best of the Best Books for Teens. This is so thrilling! I love Chicago!

“Setting aside the tangled web of labels of low, dark, high, heroic, etc. fantasy (or speculative fiction) — do you consider yourself to write ‘lesbian’ books, or books that happen to be about lesbians?”

Source: www.strangesisters.com

I’ve been thinking about how to answer this question for some time now. It’s about categorization, and I think that writers are sometimes the worst people to ask about what kind of books they write, because they may be too close to the story to tell. Usually, I think that categorizing is best done by the book’s publisher, because it’s basically about marketing: Where does the book fit best in the bookstore, so that it can be found by people who would want to read it?

However, there are some problems with that theory, too. Because often books about minorities are categorized as minority books even when they might fit into a broader genre. That has the detrimental effect of limiting their audience and ghettoizing the writer. (For a great analysis of why this is a problem, read N.K. Jemisin’s post, “Don’t Put My Book in the African American Section.”)

I think that with the increase in online and e-book buying, categorizing books becomes both more important (for discoverability through search) and more flexible, because more than one category can be applied. Many books, after all, fit into multiple categories. I think that my books do.

Both Ash and Huntress are fantasy novels, but there are other categories they could fall into: young adult, most obviously; fairy tales (for Ash); high fantasy (for Huntress); speculative fiction. They also could be categorized as lesbian books, but that depends on what you mean by “lesbian books.”

Are they books about lesbian main characters? If so, we need to ask the question, “What do you mean by ‘lesbian’?” On the surface this might sound rather simplistic, but it’s a complicated and politically charged issue. In Passions Between Women: British Lesbian Culture, 1668-1801, Emma Donoghue argued: “Certainly, it was not until the late nineteenth century that the sexologists cemented a selection of such elements into the stereotype called ‘the lesbian’ (tall, flat-chested, intellectual, frustrated); however, a wide variety of lesbian types had been described in texts of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries.”

Donoghue’s point is that even if the contemporary words we use to describe lesbians were not common before the nineteenth century, that certainly doesn’t mean that women who who loved women (sexually) did not exist before then. Similarly, while I don’t believe that any of the characters in my first two novels would self-identify as lesbians, that doesn’t change the fact that they do, in fact, engage in same-sex relationships.

(Why wouldn’t they self-identify as lesbians? Because that concept does not exist in the world of Ash and Huntress. They’re fantasy novels set in an alternate world where there is no word to describe same-sex relationships, because they are not considered abnormal. Things that are normal become default and are not marked as other or called out as exceptional. Their love is not “gay love,”; it is love.)

So … while none of the characters in my first two novels would identify as lesbians, I wouldn’t object to categorizing them as lesbian books, given Donoghue’s point.¹

But the whole question was: “do you consider yourself to write ‘lesbian’ books, or books that happen to be about lesbians?” Putting aside the debate about what a “lesbian book” is,² my answer is no, I don’t consider myself to write “lesbian” books, but nor do I believe I write books that happen to be about lesbians.

The reason I don’t believe that I write “lesbian” books is because I don’t actually set out to write books about being lesbian. I guess even though there’s plenty of room for flexibility in discussing what a “lesbian book” is, personally I believe a “lesbian book” is about the lived experience of being a lesbian: coming out, dealing with the real world’s homophobia, telling insider lesbian jokes, going to lesbian bars, etc. I’ve definitely lived this kind of lesbian life before (especially when I worked at AfterEllen), and my books are so far from that experience. So far. That’s why personally, I can’t see them as lesbian books. I’ve read books that I consider to be lesbian books and I’ve thoroughly enjoyed them. But I haven’t written any.³

Secondly, the idea that a book could be about a person who happens to be a lesbian doesn’t work for me. I know that plenty of readers are seeking books featuring minority characters but aren’t about the experience of being a minority, and sometimes those books are identified with the “happens to be” tag. (E.g., “This is about an awesome demon/werewolf hunter who happens to be Asian!”) But I don’t believe that sexual orientation (or race) just “happens to be” to anyone. I think it’s very deeply ingrained in a person’s whole being, and it is in all of my characters. I have read books in which a character’s minority identity feels tacked on as a “happens to be,” and those books disappoint me. (No, I won’t name them.)

So, in conclusion … it’s complicated. I’m fine with others identifying my books as lesbian novels, even though I don’t personally believe I’ve written any lesbian novels. I know that the lesbian label does help my books find new readers (often, lesbian readers). I know that it also turns some people off (usually people who are uncomfortable with lesbians), but that’s inevitable. I hope that the benefits of the label outweigh costs.

1. There’s another way to think about “lesbian books.” There’s a whole category of publishing devoted to LGBT fiction. It has its own conferences, its own LGBT-focused publishers, its own awards and superstars. These books tend to be shelved in the LGBT sections of bookstores, and I think this category of publishing arose out of a time when mainstream publishers did not widely publish books about LGBT people. So there’s a real history of activism and community support in LGBT publishing. My novels are not published by these LGBT-focused publishers, and I haven’t been an active part of that community of writers, but I know that my books were able to be published partly because of the work that these publishers have done in the past.
2. Or, are “lesbian books” books written by lesbians? If so, my books do qualify, because I identify as a lesbian. But there are so many books about lesbian characters that aren’t written by lesbians, and vice-versa, that I don’t believe this is the right definition.
3. That doesn’t mean I won’t!

The one question that every creative professional (writer, artist, musician, whatever) gets asked is: Where do you get your inspiration? Well, today I’ve decided to share with the world my top 10 sources of inspiration!

10. The 4-Mile Walk to the Frozen Yogurt Shop

The actual road I walk to the frozen yogurt shop

When people ask me how to get around writer’s blocks, I’m always tempted to answer cheekily: “Walk around the block.” But what I really mean is, go for a long walk. Go for the walk thinking that you’re going to get some fresh air, clear your head, get some exercise, anything except the problem you’re facing in your writing.

Where I live, it’s about two miles to the frozen yogurt shop in the next town over. Sometimes I walk all the way there, listening to music or a podcast on my iPod. When I get there, I’m feeling extremely healthy, so I obviously buy myself some frozen yogurt and put all sorts of toppings on it. Then I walk back (more slowly) eating it. Somewhere along the way, whatever problem I’ve been having with my writing is totally solved. It’s magic, assisted by a lovely frosty treat. Try it!

(Also works with: ice cream shops, cafes where you can order a delectable coffee of some sort, cupcake shops, etc. The trick is to find one appropriately far enough from where you’re writing so that you work off the calories of eating the treat while walking there and back. Sneaky!)

9. The Shower

It’s true, hot water does more than ease your muscles. It seems to somehow open the pores of your brain. This is aided by the addition of really yummy-smelling soaps and shower gels. (Seriously, if you don’t like your soap, the chances of finding inspiration in the shower decline precipitously.)

The trick is to focus on the shower itself: the water on your skin, the fragrance of your carefully selected cleansing product, the rituals of bathing. The likelihood of inspiration striking is directly related to the degree of focus you give the shower. The more you think about the shower and not your desire for inspiration, the more likely the inspiration will come.

(For some people, it also works with baths. I’m not really a bath person.)

8. The Traffic

This could totally happen ... in your imagination.

Being in stuck in traffic could seem horribly frustrating, but it is also a source of inspiration. The next time you’re sitting behind a long line of immovable vehicles, tell yourself a story. Anything. All you want to do is distract yourself.

See that blue Ford truck over there? And the guy in black-rimmed glasses driving it? Think about him. What the hell made a hipster (he’s also got a super trendy haircut) get himself a Ford truck? It’s probably because it’s not his. He’s borrowing it from his super butch boyfriend, who works construction, but is currently laid up in a hospital due to a construction accident. So the hipster boy is driving the truck to see him … except he might stop off at the construction site to pick up his boyfriend’s paycheck, where he realizes that the accident WAS NOT AN ACCIDENT AFTER ALL.

Etc.

(Just pay attention to the traffic, too. It’s going to move sometime.)

7. Battlestar Galactica

If you haven’t seen this television show, what have you been waiting for? It’s the FONT of many an inspiration for me, and I know it can be for you, too. Wait! you say. Isn’t that some dorky scifi show about robots?

NO! It is an incredibly nuanced story about life and meaning and honor and tricky, tricky villains. It is about God and gods, it’s about love and hate, it’s about forming alliances between people who may have nothing in common on the surface but underneath it all, they just want a home. And beyond that, the music is amazing, the visual imagery of the show is also spectacular, and most important of all, the characters are incredibly three-dimensional.

For me, watching a really complicated television series awakens my brain. It makes me feel like all my synapses are firing, and all sorts of ideas start sparking all over the place. It doesn’t have to be Battlestar Galactica for you. Maybe it’s The Sopranos or The Walking Dead or whatever — the point is, seeing something amazingly layered unfold over hours and hours can awaken all sorts of inspiration.

I think it can work with movies, too, as long as you are sufficiently drawn into the story to completely forget about your own writing. As soon as you forget, the ideas come.

6. The Book You Wish You Wrote

An amazing book sculpture by Su Blackwell

When I read a book that affects me so positively that I wish I’d written it, I feel inspired to push myself harder as a writer. This source of inspiration isn’t really about generating a new idea; it’s about generating motivation to improve. I see a beautifully crafted sentence and I think: I want to write like that. I read a multilayered plot and I think: I need to learn how to do that.

It’s important to feed your motivation to improve, because if you don’t have the motivation, you won’t improve. I’ve found the best way to stimulate that motivation is to read books that amaze me. The best part of it is, I never know when a book like that will hit. When it does, it’s like somebody gave me a gift out of nowhere. Don’t you love getting presents? The only thing you have to do to get them is to read a lot. I guarantee you’ll find books that turn your world upside down, as long as you don’t stop reading.

5. Public Transit

Mermaids on the subway. Totally real.

Sometimes the train stinks (literally). Sometimes the bus makes me nauseated. But also: Riding public transit is an unending source of inspiration.

That woman with the pierced lip and the black eyeliner. Who is she? Maybe she’s on her way to an assignation with a witch who lives downtown under the Macy’s store. There are basements there that lead to the underworld, you know.

That boy slouching into his puffy black coat, carrying the messenger bag stuffed so full it takes up the entire seat next to him. What’s in that bag? Is he a courier? And what is he carrying? What if it’s the head of a zombie?

That’s not even the most far out answer I could come up with. The point is that there are stories everywhere. Your task, especially if you’re bored on the subway, is to discover them by asking a few key questions: Why? What is that? Where are they going? The stories will come right out.

4. The Book You Know You Could Write Better

We all know the feeling of finishing a novel and wanting to throw it against the wall because the premise, while initially appealing, took such an appalling turn that you can’t believe the book was published! (No, I’m not telling you which books I felt that about.)

You can take this feeling of frustration and “THIS IS SO UNFAIR I CAN WRITE BETTER THAN THAT CRAP” and turn it, directly, into inspiration. Can you really write better? All right then, how would you have told the story? Then do it.

3. The Meditation Cushion

Many people think that meditation is about clearing the mind, about not thinking. I’ve been taught that meditation is about being present. It’s about feeling the cushion beneath your butt, and the way your left leg is slowly starting to fall asleep as you try (sometimes unsuccessfully) to focus on your breath. It’s about coming back to being present every time you notice that your thoughts begin to accelerate away from the here-and-now.

I admit it: I get distracted a lot when I meditate. I try to come back to the present as soon as I notice that I’m not here anymore, but (secretly) I don’t really mind being distracted. Because a lot of the time, I’ve been envisioning some aspect of the story I’m writing. For me, there’s something about sitting there and trying to focus on breathing that seems to throw open the door to my imagination.

It could be that I’ve been doing this for a while (er, coming up on nine years now) and I’ve trained myself to be this way. But I remember when I first started learning to meditate, I immediately noticed how much it opened up my mind. It actually felt miraculous to have that door open so easily and so regularly, and now I do it every morning before I write.

2. The Elliptical Machine

Some people will never be able to sit on a cushion in silence. For them, I recommend another tried-and-true source of inspiration: the elliptical machine. (OK, it could also be: running, the treadmill, a stationary bike, etc.) I cannot tell you how many thorny plot problems I’ve worked out while sweating on the elliptical at the gym.

I think it has something to do with exercising your physical body in a repetitive way. If you have to do something that requires concentration, like pilates class or lifting weights or doing an active yoga class, I don’t think it works. You need to do something that your brain doesn’t have to think about; something that your body can do all on its own. It helps if what you’re doing hurts just enough to make you yearn to be distracted. (If it hurts too much, you’ll just give up.)

To distract yourself, you can make up stories! Or you can let your brain wander around the problem that you’re facing in your writing. I believe the fact that you’re exercising and sweating will temper any fear of not being inspired/not coming up with the answer to your problem. Why? Because your body is too busy exercising to chastise yourself. And also: you’re being so virtuous by exercising! You’re already a superstar! Figuring out this writing problem will just be icing on the cake. And even if you don’t figure it out, it doesn’t matter, because did I mention you have been working out and being totally virtuous? Go ahead, pat yourself on the back and go have a doughnut.

(Doughnuts can also be inspiring.)

1. Dreams (They’re Not Just For Stephenie Meyer)

Everybody knows that Twilight came to Stephenie Meyer in a dream, but don’t discount dreams as a source of inspiration just because it seems so clicheed! Just the other day, I dreamed that I was in Las Vegas and had parked my car in a vast multistory underground garage. When I went to pick it up, lo and behold my car was gone! It had been stolen!

Luckily, in my dream, I overheard the thieves talking very nearby. They were two people: a youngish man with long dirty blond hair wearing a brown raincoat, and another person whose appearance I don’t entirely recall but had curly brown hair. They fully admitted they’d stolen my car, along with something else … my heart, which had been stored in a jar.

The thieves suddenly ran away, vanishing instantly! The hotel manager, though, was at my side and guaranteed that he would catch them, since they had security guards posted all over the place.

Now, I don’t know if your dreams are as crazy as mine, but if they’re not, there’s one way to make them more interesting. Start writing them down. I did this once, and I began to remember so many of my dreams that it was frankly overwhelming. I stopped writing them down, but these days I still remember them. Sometimes they’re full of anxiety, and those aren’t necessarily useful for inspiration, but every once in a while I’ll have a dream that is SO FREAKING AMAZING that I run out of bed and write it down right away. One of those dreams gave birth to my next book, Adaptation.

And if you don’t think your dreams are interesting enough to draw inspiration from, I give you my most recent crazy dream. Go ahead: write a story about a world in which people store their hearts in jars. What kind of world is that? And who would be stupid enough to leave their jarred heart in a parking garage in Las Vegas?

Good luck!

I’m a feminist. I’m an athlete. As a child I was what was then called a “tomboy,” which to me means merely that the things I was told were “boy” things, like playing outdoors, climbing trees, being active, and wanting to have adventures, were the things I did and wanted to do.

I try very hard to write stories in which there are as many female characters as male characters, with as much agency and importance in the plot. Yet I often have consciously to go back through later drafts to make sure that my female leads aren’t being more passive than I actually want them to be, aren’t letting others make decisions for them or devise all the cunning plans (unless there is a specific reason because of experience, competencies, or social roles), are showing leadership, and are present as confident individuals with a strong sense of themselves (as long as that is within character).

Kate is reacting to a post from Mette Ivie Harrison that concludes, “All gender, in my view, is in the end, a masquerade.” (You can read the whole of Mette’s post here.) Kate continues:

I go on about this because I’m trying to understand how these underlying message creep into my ways of struggling with gender in my fiction. I don’t have an answer, nor do I think there really is one except for the constant need to be alert, to be present, to try to keep one’s eyes open and learn and do better. It’s a constant, changing process, just as living is.

Do you struggle with gender issues in your work? Do you struggle with gender issues in work you read? To go back to what Harrison said, where do you find your authenticity?

When I read Kate’s post I was immediately struck with a sense of “wow, I’ve done that,” particularly where she writes about consciously going through later drafts of her novels to make sure her female leads aren’t being too passive.

I, too, am a feminist. And I’m a lesbian. I’ve been thinking about gender as a lived experience for a while, especially because I have plenty of friends who aren’t traditionally feminine. I would have expected that in my writing, I wouldn’t fall back on traditional Western beliefs about passivity and femininity.

In my first two fantasy novels, Ash and Huntress, I don’t think I encountered the passivity problem. But with my next novel, I found myself falling straight into the passive feminine character trap — even when I truly, in my gut, did not believe that character was a passive individual. It was a little startling to me to see it on the page, and I do hope that in revision her character has become the individual I imagined her to be.

In thinking about why this happened, I believe it’s because my first two novels were not set in the contemporary United States. They are both set in secondary fantasy worlds where I have purposely expunged homophobia and (mostly) sexism from those societies. Because of that, the girls in those books are not weighted down with the expectations and traditions that an American girl in the twenty-first century is burdened with. I took great joy in turning those traditions upside down.

But when I began writing a book set in the contemporary USA (Adaptation), I promptly fell into the passive trap. I had never written a novel set in the “real world,” and suddenly I was dealing with all sorts of expectations and traditions about the way girls behave, how they dress, what they do. It was … truly weird. Yes, I found it much weirder to write about contemporary teen girls than magically gifted sages or tomboyish heroines who like to go hunting.

The weirdness might come out of both being fairly close to the experience of a contemporary teen girl (I mean, I was one — not yesterday, but within living memory) and also having come very far from it (by coming out, by being in a community full of gender questioning). In the last year I’ve thought a lot about things I never expected I’d have to think about again: boys, for one thing.

How do girls think about boys, and how can I express that without falling into the passive trap in which the boy is always initiating things? In a related vein, how should my boy characters behave? (In my previous books, my male characters were men. I knew how they behaved. But boys, not surprisingly, are a foreign country to me.) How do I present their masculinity in a way that’s appealing and sexy, without falling into too many “hot boy” traps? (These are common in YA, and involve jewel-colored eyes, broad shoulders, and brooding, not necessarily in that order.)

And clothes. How can a character express her identity through her clothing? In Ash and Huntress, the girls basically wear uniforms — except when Ash goes to the ball. That ball gown is one moment of theatrical costuming that I understood; it was symbolic and it was magical. But in a book set in the contemporary USA, every time a girl gets dressed, it says something about her. And my job was to figure out what I wanted it to say. (I’m not even getting into makeup.)

These are things that most women probably have absorbed as common, everyday behaviors that they do almost without thinking. But as the writer creating a female character, I had to think about these everyday behaviors in a way that felt totally foreign to me. I had to think about them as chock full of meaning.

(To some extent, this is what all writing is about: thinking about the everyday with a different, symbolic lens. But it’s very easy to simply write a story set in the real world without thinking about these issues at all; to just write a girl wearing makeup and a skirt without being conscious of the fact that her appearance speaks volumes about gender, sexuality, class, etc. I’m also not saying that every book must engage with these issues, but my books do. So I think about them.)

That’s not to say that every tiny little gesture a character makes is laden with symbolism (necessarily), but yeah: the way a girl looks and acts and thinks about boys (and girls) is full of statements about gender. This is one of those moments where I think, duh, Malinda, you should know that by now. But putting it into practice, in writing, is a very interesting experience. It’s like un-doing everything you do every day automatically, and re-doing it with purpose. It can be trippy.

A year of virtuous healthful living?

The opposite?

Or perhaps you expect the apocalypse?

(I know, it’s the wrong apocalypse, but isn’t that hilarious?)

Depending on what you expect, you might resolve to do different things. I have never been terribly serious about making resolutions because I know that I am afflicted with an Extreme Case of Guilty Conscience, and if I resolve to do something and fail to follow through, I will probably implode with guilt. So, for the last couple of years I resolved to read a few books. Well, I’m not going to resolve that this year because, honestly, I’m still in the middle of reading Orlando (which I swear I intend to finish … sometime) and because the idea of it no longer strikes me as fun.

So, this year, I am resolving nothing. Not in a sneaky wu wei way, but I think it’s plenty enough for me to just keep on doing what I’ve been doing, perhaps with the added goal of doing a little less of it. As I mentioned back at Thanksgiving, 2011 was pretty busy for me, and I’d like to have more time to do nothing (perhaps, yes, in the wu wei way).

Also, I suspect that I will be busy enough in 2012 dealing with the fruits of all my 2011 labor. This year I have a number of books coming out! Here’s my publication schedule for 2012:

May 2012: The Letter Q: Queer Writers’ Notes To Their Younger Selves, edited by Sarah Moon (I have a letter to my 16-year-old self in this anthology)

July 2012: The paperback edition of Huntress, with special bonus content!

Fall 2012: Foretold, edited by Carrie Ryan (I have a short story in this anthology about prophecies)

Fall 2012: Adaptation, my next novel!

I’m really excited about all of this, but of course I am most excited about bringing my next new novel into the world. And that’s where I slam right up against expectations.

You see, Adaptation is quite different from Ash and Huntress. In fact, I do not doubt that some readers will think they were written by totally different people. So, if someone has read Ash or Huntress and picks up Adaptation expecting something similar … they will be sorely disappointed.

I know that at times I’ve gotten attached to a writer’s or musician’s particular style, and when they come out with something different, at first I am usually disappointed because I wanted more of what they’d already given me. This is a totally normal reaction. But at the same time, I think it’s a bit much to expect (there’s that word again) a writer or musician (or anybody, really) to simply do the same thing over and over again.

Sure, there are writers who do that brilliantly, and I love them for it. In fact, these are often the authors whose books I reach for when I want something very consistent and comforting, like Elizabeth Peters or her alter ego Barbara Michaels. There’s nothing wrong with writing variations on a single theme.

It’s just that I’ve realized I am not that kind of writer. Huntress was already somewhat different from Ash, though it had a similar serious fantasy feel. But Adaptation is totally different. I think I’m going to spend a lot of time this year repeating that. “It’s different! It’s totally different!”

This doesn’t mean that I never want to write in the style of Ash again. In fact, the story being published in Foretold is very much in that style. That story, “One True Love,” is another fairy tale (sort of). It felt totally comfortable for me to write that story. I remember that when I was writing it, I felt like I actually knew what I was doing for once. That was a really nice feeling.

But I also like being challenged by doing new things. I think it’s fun to strike out into new storytelling territory and figure out how to develop a style to fit that space. It reminds me that writing is really about decisions: What word to use here, what phrase to use there. You choose different words for different styles. It’s both an intellectual and creative exercise for me, and it was thrilling to be able to use words in Adaptation that I could not use in Ash or Huntress because of the nature of their stories.

So, Adaptation: “It’s different!” It’s set in the near-future United States, for one thing, rather than a magical fantasy world. And while my influences and inspirations for Ash and Huntress ran along the lines of Robin McKinley and Kristin Cashore, my influences and inspirations for Adaptation came straight out of … television.

I know, you’re shocked (and maybe a little disappointed), right? Here are some of my inspirations for Adaptation:

The thing that I’ve noticed, though, about writers or artists who zoom from one style to another, is that beneath those stylistic differences, you can often still detect the core of the artist. The themes are sometimes very similar. For example, when Sarah Waters shifted from writing Victorian romps to writing World War II-era novels, some themes remained: confinement, for one thing. I’ve always thought that was fascinating about her books. And though Holly Black’s Modern Faery Tales are very different in style from her Curse Workers series, they all still seem to deal with moral ambiguity.

If there’s a theme in my books, I think it’s the transformative power of love. This sounds cheesy, but I totally see it running through everything I write. So, that’s still in Adaptation (and its sequel, which I’m currently writing). But, other than that? Yeah. Different.

So. Expectations. They can really choke the joy out of experiencing something new. And maybe I lied when I said I’m not making any resolutions this year. Maybe I am resolving to have fewer expectations. To open a book and not expect A, B, or C. To let the story speak for itself.

Happy new year!

This free two-session writing workshop will cover the main elements of writing fantasy and science fiction, from how to create three-dimensional fantasy worlds to the basics of plot, to how to develop characters, and how to revise drafts. The workshop will also include opportunities for students to write and share their own work.

In more detail, here’s what I’ll be covering:

DAY 1: Saturday, Jan. 21

3-4 p.m. — The Basics of Plot (With an Assist From Harry Potter)
4-5 p.m. — Worldbuilding 101

DAY 2: Saturday, Jan. 28

3-4 p.m. — How to Make Your Characters Suffer Live
4-4:30 p.m. — Putting the Vision in Revision
4:30-5 p.m. — Q&A

And here’s how to sign up for this workshop:

• Enrollment is limited and pre-registration is required
• Students must be in grades 9-12 and sign up for both days
• Visit or call the reference desk at: 415.457.5629

This event is supported by Poets & Writers, Inc. through a grant it has received from The James Irvine Foundation and by The Friends of the Marin County Free Library

January 2011

Sunset over Mauna Kea, Hawaii

February 2011

The Raygun Gothic Rocketship (The Embarcadero, San Francisco)

March 2011

007: Look at how cute I am!

April 2011

The HUNTRESS book launch at Books Inc Palo Alto

May 2011

The very first Diversity in YA event at the San Francisco Public Library

June 2011

The Dyke March at Dolores Park, San Francisco (click to enlarge)

July 2011

The beach near San Diego

August 2011

Wild blackberries hand-picked in Sonoma County

September 2011

The (sad but necessary) removal of our giant live oak from our property due to sudden oak death syndrome

October 2011

Dinner after the last Diversity in YA event in San Diego

November 2011

Thanksgiving dinner at my mom's house

December 2011

Christmas hedgehog, de-stuffed