I’m sitting here in my little thatched-roof bungalow in Belize, looking out the window at the rain and mysteriously named jungle plants, waiting for my husband to wake up.  The locals are saying the rainy season started early this year, the result of global warming and an angry Mother Earth.  I’m starting to get paranoid about the world ending in 2012.  I’ve been hanging out in the center of the ancient Mayan civilization after all, and they’re the ones who started the rumor.  All signs point to a day of reckoning.

Our tour guides proudly tell us they are the descendants of the Maya.  They have led us over pyramids and through caves, taught us the medicinal uses of this tree and that shrub, taught us how to bark like Howler Monkeys.  They have introduced us to the skeleton of a woman exactly my age, a human sacrifice hundreds of years old, brought half a mile into the earth through a maze of stalagmites and stalactites, over rocks and through narrow crevices.  She must have waded through the same underground river, felt the same cold limestone walls as she navigated through the dark.  Or were her hands tied behind her back? Did she speak as she was led to her death? Did she beg to be set free? Or did she believe it was an honor to be a gift to the gods?

[Read more…] about Hello from the middle of a rainstorm in Belize

Yesterday I decided it’d be funny to post my old poetry (at the suggestion of Twitter buddy @emilytastic). So I went home and rummaged through old boxes containing dozens of dusty notebooks and binders full of yellowed pages.  The plan was to read through them and select the juiciest pieces for your amusement.

I now realize that was a terrible idea.

What I discovered was that not only was I a horrible writer as a teenager, I was also totally full of shit.  I was convinced that I was the deepest and smartest and most wounded teenager the world had ever seen, and I was so incredibly unique that no one could possibly understand me.  These were apparently some of my favorite words, as proven by their repeated use: oppression, ignorance, darkness, conformity, paradox, apathy, and hypocrisy. And oh, did I mention the constant use adverbs and alliteration? Oh. My. God.

These poems (if you can even call them that) paint the picture of an incredibly lonely, angry, and probably mentally unstable young lady with delusions of grandeur and a really hard time keeping metaphors consistent.  She was also sexually frustrated, into Wicca, fond of death imagery and the phrases “silent scream” and “deafening silence,” and apparently convinced she was the reincarnation of Anne Sexton or Sylvia Plath.   I can almost hear her voice reciting the poems in front of her freshman year Creative Writing Club, 100% earnest and with one of those awful Beatnik poetry voices. You have no idea how much I am cringing right now.

I considered going back on my promise to share these with you. When one is mortified with embarrassment, it is often difficult to see the humor in a situation.  But then I got a glimpse of myself at sixteen, a beautiful girl but always trying to cover it up, dressed in a charming combination of hippie, goth, indie rocker, and riot grrrl styles, trying so hard to act like a free spirit but oh so incredibly serious and uptight. And scared. God, I was scared of everything. But I tried so hard to act like a tough girl.  I watched movies and read books I didn’t understand and pretended I liked them because I wanted so badly to impress people.  I wrote this poetry and pretended I understood myself and you and society and the government and religion and The Truth. I can see this girl walking barefoot, drinking coffee, writing manifestos, hating the “phonies,” worshiping the The Northwest and everything Indie, believing with all her heart that all of her thoughts and all of her feelings were truly original. There she is–this scowling, unshaven, thrift shop clothed girl who thinks she knows everything, reciting her poetry as if her life depends on it, screaming “LISTEN TO ME!” at the top of her lungs.

Did I mention the deafening silence?

I think I’ll just call this a study in humility.  Yes, I am a published author and I wrote a book I am very proud of. But before all that, I wrote this:

[Read more…] about Quite possibly the worst emo poetry you have ever read

Some of you probably caught the #gimmeacall hashtag on Twitter yesterday and today, where folks tweeted messages of advice to their former high school selves (in honor of the release of Sarah Mlynowski’s new novel Gimme a Call). A few of my favorites:

• “Dear high-school self: don’t worry, you’ll put those bitches in a book one day” (@abbymcdonald)
• “Dear 15-year-old self, those comics you feel guilty for spending your barmitzvah money on each week will save your life one day” (@neilhimself aka Neil Gaiman)
• “Dear HS Self: You have a page on wiki now. The guy who chased you w/a knife cause he thought you were gay doesn’t” (@adamselzer)

This (in addition to a bizarre dream I had starring my 7th and 8th grade boyfriends) made me start thinking about my teen years, about all of the things I wish I could tell the younger me that might have prevented a whole lot of pain and embarrassment.  However, if it weren’t for that pain and embarrassment, I probably wouldn’t be writing to you now.  Why on earth would I want to write teen novels if I had no personal need to revisit that traumatic period of my life?  There are far more lucrative things to do with my time.  If it weren’t for the pain, I probably wouldn’t be a writer at all.

It’s a strange thing to think about–how much experience forms a person’s identity, how so much of who were are is really just a matter of chance.  What if I hadn’t moved when I was twelve?  What if I stayed in my safe, small town until I graduated from high school?  What if I had never had those particular friends and boyfriends? What if I had gone to a different college? I could be someone totally different today, someone unrecognizable.  I could have had a safe, uneventful life. I could have made “smart” choices.  But honestly, what fun would that be? If it weren’t for all those less-than-smart choices, I wouldn’t have had so many opportunities to learn, to be challenged, to grow and build character.

I can say that now because I’m a safe distance away.  I’ve lived through it, learned my painful lessons, and built myself a hard-earned happily-ever-after.  If my teen self read this drivel, she would probably want to punch me in the nose. God, how I hated those patronizing adults who kept saying “What doesn’t kill you makes you stronger” or “You’ll look back on these years and laugh.”  Well, I’m not laughing. I look back on those years and they still make me shudder. The difference is I can now see that all those painful moments were not actually the end of the world, and they would in fact come in handy later.  And what better revenge on the past is there than taking it and making it yours? I have taken those years, transformed them and turned them into fuel, made them into something useful and beautiful.

Blah blah blah. There are still a lot of things I would have liked to get through my thick teenage skull.

For instance:

• That friend who says she can give you a tattoo in the park with a sewing needle? Don’t listen to her.
• Go with your first instinct and skip prom. It totally sucked.
• Don’t let that creepy hippie guy hug you. There’s a reason he’s always hanging around teenage girls.
• This whole boyfriend thing? There’s a reason “friend” is in the title. You’re supposed to like them.
• Just consider going to a different college than the one you had your mind set on since freshman year.  Seriously, it won’t kill you to change your mind.
• STAY AWAY FROM THE GREEN-HAIRED GIRL!
• Hide your journal somewhere your mom can’t find it.
• You could try being a little nicer to people who aren’t like you. That rich skinny girl who’s always smiling and tan even in winter–she’s actually not the devil.
• You may not get caught for stealing that car, but you will pay karmically. Oh yes you will.
• There’s a girl in seventh grade who will save your life with her friendship.  Don’t let her drift away.  Your heart will break for the rest of your life if you lose her.
• Trust your instincts about people. If they scare you, they’re probably not the right people to hang out with.
• You don’t have to be so lonely. There are people like you. You just have to open your eyes a little wider to see them.
• Don’t spit. It’s really ugly.
• Your body is yours alone. It is your choice what happens to it.
• Your parents love you. Ask them for help.
• Those best friends of yours in high school? They still are. They were in your wedding party, including the boys.

What about you? Do you have anything you wish you could say to your younger self?

by the magnificent Justin Frahm

This is me.  With my pet Unicornbird.  We are flying and I am happy.

love,
Amy

PS: You know what would be really cool?  If you guys sent me pictures of you holding a copy of Beautiful in random places.  Then I could post the picture on here and you’d be famous to like the two and a half people who read this blog.  I’m totally copying what Frank Portman does on his blog, but I’m sure he knows that imitation is the best form of flattery.  Shoot, I owe him a photo of me holding Andromeda Klein.  When did he ask me for that? Like months ago.  Oops.

By the way, you should read that book.  Because it’s rad.

Oh, and send you photos to me at amy_lynn_reed@yahoo.com

With all the big awards and Best of the Year and Best of the Decade lists that have come out in the last few weeks, I’m reminded of just how awesome and diverse the Young Adult genre is, and how lucky I am to be a part of it.  When I was a teenager, there were very few books I felt I could hold onto as mine, books that told my story from my point of view.  Now the field is so full, there’s something for everybody: from vampires to sci-fi, from romance to LBGTQ to historical fiction, from  the light fare of Gossip Girl and Lauren Conrad to the depth of Laurie Halse Anderson, from Meg Cabot to Ellen Hopkins to Rachel Cohn to Julie Anne Peters, from Frank Portman to Jason Myers to Sherman Alexie to David Levithan to Marcus Zuzak.  We’ve got subject matter covered.  We’ve got gritty and we’ve got escapist.  We’ve got sex and drugs and rock & roll, and we’ve got cheerleaders and straight-A’s and virginity clubs.  What more could you ask for?

Well, I’ve got something.  Yes, we should be proud of ourselves.  Yes, we’ve come a long way since The Babysitter’s Club.  But that’s no reason to take it easy, to become complacent in our art.  For me, the process of writing is, more than anything, a search for the truth.  Every time I sit down to tell a story, I challenge myself to open my eyes just a little bit more. I push myself to see something new, and then I get to tell you about it.  I’ve committed to telling the stories others are afraid to tell, the stories I very much needed to hear as a teen, the stories I was told not to talk about.  They are the stories that are “supposed” to be kept as secrets, that when hidden turn into the silence that isolates and tears people apart from the insides.  It is an honor and a gift to be able to tell these stories, to speak these truths and give them breath.

But what if we challenged ourselves even more?  What if we not only covered the expanses of subject matter; what if we went even further than that?  What if we focused not just on what we’re saying, but how we’re saying it?  We’ve gotten so good at linear narrative, why don’t we spice things up a bit?  Instead of telling our stories the old-fashioned way of beginning to end, why don’t we experiment a little more with non-linear time and structure and point-of-view?  Let’s tell stories in fragments and spirals, backwards and upside-down and inside-out.  Let’s try to be as diverse in form and perspective as we are in content.  We already have some trailblazers–Ellen Hopkins and Sonya Sones have found their voices in verse–why don’t we follow their lead and shake things up a bit?

Why? you may ask.  Well, quite frankly, because we can.  Because we’re writers and artists and we need to constantly inspire ourselves.  Because words are things to play with.  Because form is fluid.  Because our readers are smart and they want to be challenged and shown new ways of looking at the world.  Because we are their guides and we should give them their money’s worth.  Because the well of characters and stories is endless, and so should be their vehicles.    Because imagination is the greatest gift we have and the world expands the more we use it.