Maybe Your Students Need More Stories About Mental HEALTH

(adapted from an article I wrote on Linked In)
As we get ready to send our children, our adolescents, our teens and young adults, back into the classroom, it's time to think about those fall stressors, what each child is dealing with at home, in their personal lives, plus the pressures they face, perhaps, from the kid sitting next to them, or waiting for them down the hall.
Knowing this, knowing how many of our teens, especially, are suffering these days, many educators will encourage them to read books about mental illness. There are long lists of such books, many of them great, compelling stories, many award-winners, but how often I wish these stories reflected less about mental illness and more about mental HEALTH.

In fact, IMHO, some of the most famous of these books seem to glamorize mental illness and/or suicide in problematic ways. In these stories, the adults are rarely helpful and rarely very present at all.

In the face of rising natural, and unnatural, disasters, there's an oft-quoted Mr. Rogers' line, "Look for the helpers," but so often in these stories our kids read, the helpers, quite frankly, just aren't very good. They really don't seem to care much. They don't have much skill.

When I sign copies of STARS, I often include
a replica of Sister Agnes Teresa's ladder up.
Because who doesn't need a ladder up sometimes? 

I wondered why this was. . . and, as I wrote and shaped IN SIGHT OF STARS and realized my protagonist, Klee, was in a bad way and needed help, I wanted to present the other side, the side I have been lucky enough to experience -- from my high school guidance counselor who offered me a safe haven through all of junior and senior year, through some of the extraordinary therapists who have helped me and my family through some of our roughest times, their roughest times, as I raised my kids.

That is Dr. Alvarez, a character modeled largely on a real therapist, a true and extraordinary helper who patiently works with Klee until he is ready to participate in his own healing during his stay at an in-patient rehab facility in a fictional town in upstate NY.
Therapists can be like shoes -- it often takes several tryings on before you find one that fits, find one that is comfortable, the right size and style for you. But they are out there, and I'm hungry for them to be fully reflected in books for teens.

Similarly, I'm anxious for the use of psychotropic medications, where needed, to be positively reflected in young adult stories, which is to say, they don't change who a person is, or undermine their ability to be creative -- If they are, perhaps that person is on the wrong medication for them, or the wrong dosage. My experience with such medications is they simply allow the person to function more typically, as themselves, by quieting or taking the edge off atypical and problematic body chemistry.
In IN SIGHT OF STARS, Klee needs the help of medication for the time being, and may not need those medications in the near future.

Yes, there is language in the story. YES, there are intense situations. Have you seen what our kids are privy to these days? Have you met any of our teens?
Look, all I know is our kids need help and support ,and if you want them to feel safe seeking it out, share stories with them where the help HELPS. Because it can, and does.

I promise, it can and does.

- gae

IN SIGHT OF HELP. May is Mental health Awareness Month.

"In Sight of Stars deals with mental health, Vincent Van Gogh, family and recovery; all told in some of the most beautiful prose you will probably ever read. As far as I'm concerned, [this novel] is the equivalent to “Starry Night Over the Rhone,” making Gae Polisner the Vincent Van Gogh of young adult fiction." 

- Teen Reads

May is -- has been -- Mental Health Awareness month, and I have a LOT to "say" about that, except that on the 4th of May -- very un "force" like -- or, maybe exactly force-like -- I fell and broke my hand very un-ninja style, and my typing is, shall we say, fucking limited. 

So, suffice that I want to say this:

WE ALL SUFFER. 

We do.

Some greatly.

Some less so.

I believe it's only a matter of degree and circumstance that separates us.

And if you suffer, there is help out there. Even if you don't suffer acutely, the help is useful. The help can be life-changing. (In this regard, I have witnessed Dialectical Behavior Therapy be life changing, though, as always, it matters that you find a good and skilled therapist/center that fits for you).

If there is one thing I hope readers might take from IN SIGHT OF STARS, it is this:

Open yourself. Know you are worthy. Let people in. 

And, if you want to know more specifics, reach out to me. 

xox gae

** now out in AUDIOBOOK narrated by the awesome Michael Crouch 

Friday Feedback: Take Your Advice and . . . Think About It?

So, a friend of mine -- a writer with several traditionally-published books under his belt -- asked if I would take a look at a YA manuscript of his (his first in the genre).

The manuscript has been getting great "plot" feedback from agents and editors alike, but they are, thereafter, rejecting it -- mostly on claimed issues with the story's "voice."

As such, he specifically asked me not to worry about little problems with story or structure or dialogue, but to just see if I could figure out what is wrong (if anything) with the voice.

So, here's the thing: I'm reading, knowing his credentials far exceed mine, and I'm seeing problems everywhere in the first 30 pages -- concrete problems that have nothing to do with voice (though might amount to why voice isn't working for them). And, so, I'm questioning myself.

"Who am I, compared to this more successful writer, compared to editors and agents alike, to think I might actually "see" more concrete things wrong with this manuscript?"

Worse, when I know that writing advice is subjective.

I like what I like, and I don't like what I don't like, and as objective as I try to be, that truth is going to seep in to any critique I offer.

Even professional reviewers can't avoid this truth, or how can one explain the same book getting a stellar Kirkus review, while the School Library Journal or VOYA review is, say, less so? (*coughs*). Doesn't it mean that those readings are subjective?

So, here's the million dollar question: when seeking feedback, Who do you believe?

What advice do you take?

IMHO, there are really no definitive answers, but I do have a rule of thumb. All well-intended, constructive criticism is, of course, food for thought. Sometimes, no more than that.

But, if two or more people I admire (writing or reading-wise) take issue with something in my manuscript (or, in the case of my agent or editor, it only needs to be that one person), I deem it more than food for thought. I deem it something that needs my focus and consideration.

I may not agree with how or why they've taken issue -- or their potential suggestion, if any, for how to fix it -- but I do believe that it means as the writer, I may not have done my job communicating what I was hoping to, as well as I thought I had.

I need to go back with fresh eyes and look at those parts again.


So, for example: In my current manuscript, one of the "bits" that plays out throughout the story happens to be a favorite part of several of my BETA readers. I got repeated positive feedback about those parts. My former agent loved them too.

So, imagine my surprise when my current (and forever) agent commented that he found those parts occasionally to be a bit "twee."

Twee?!

Blech.

My first thought was to ignore him -- I mean, it's like five against one, right?!

But as I thought more about it, and held sight of my rule -- I thought, maybe I just haven't done those parts quite as well as I thought I had. Maybe my BETA readers are forgiving, and my agent is rightfully not.

So, now, on revision, I will look again with fresh eyes and an open zen-like ( ;)) mind.

And, the best I can do for my friend, is offer up what I "see," how I feel when I read, and know he will take it for whatever it's worth.

But, here's the bottom line. I've said it before, and I'll say it again. WRITING IS SUBJECTIVE. Reading is too. Critiquing is too.

For as many readers (agents, editors, reviewers) as like your book, there will always be detractors, someone who doesn't. Some readers will connect with your book, and some just won't. It's personal, but it isn't. So, hold on to that. In the end it's your story. Your voice.

Only you can decide.

So, here we go, peeps. Just you and me and Friday Feedback. You know the RULES. Here's a bit from the manuscript I'm working on now. Just a rough bit from the early middle. The main character is a 17-yr old boy, and a very good artist.

"So, then. . .” She lifts my portfolio and rests it on the table. “I didn’t open it, but I really wanted to.” She laughs, apologetically. “It’s just that I hear that you’re good.”

I shift on the couch and press against the headache that’s forming at the bridge of my nose.

“Ah, I see you’re not offering to help with my curiosity. Fair enough.” She winks to let me know she’s just playing, and slides the portfolio off to the side. There’s something real about it – her – how she’s honest, rather than therapist-like, which makes me feel badly that I’m not in the mood. She pulls her clipboard back onto her lap. “No worries, really, I’ll live. I promise. But, maybe Monday you’ll share?”  She flips the sheet over and writes a note on it. The portfolio sits there, its handle dangling over the table’s edge.

My eyes flash to the small piece of masking tape wrapped around its handle, the words Kee ha Wo scrawled in Sarah’s handwriting. My stomach twists. I’d forgotten about that piece of tape. It’s mostly brown smudge now, my grip erasing letters over time.

Kee ha Wo. It reads like some cryptic Chinese phrase. But I know what it said. I remember.

           It was a double entendre, the day of the MOMA, on the train. She had whispered it in my ear, and the next week, I found it taped there on the handle like that. She had burst out laughing when I found it, loud enough that Mrs. Tarantoli gave us a look from her desk.

Kee ha Woo. I remember every single word Sarah said.

- gae

p.s. if you missed Kate's Teachers Write! Quick Write yesterday, and you're a participant, you shouldn't have. You can find it, and chime in your letter here: http://www.katemessner.com/teachers-write-89-thursday-quick-write/

p.s.s. No sad goodbyes here from me to my Teachers Write! campers (I refuse!!). Friday Feedback isn't going anywhere just because summer may end. Come back and play any Friday, and your students are welcome too. xox

Friday Feedback, Dream Five

Lori is working on a book of dream poems
and illustrations.



This is my friend Lori Landau. She and I have been friends for a long (long) time.

Among many things, she is a columnist at Technorati (Lifestyle: Social Goodness) and shows and sells her jewelry and photography at the Open Center in NYC.

As teens we wrote endless poetry together, but she has continued to work on her craft and grow as a poet, while I have veered in other directions (she has also forked and veered, but has taken her poetry with her).

And, the truth is, few other's poems move me the way Lori's do.


So, when, I found a poem of hers -- Dream Five -- in my email box the other day like a small gift, I did what I always do: I coveted it.

Her poems make me want to eat them, drink them in. I have tried once or twice to suck them up through the computer screen but the glass intervenes.

So this morning, I did the next best thing. I sat down in front of my computer, turned my webcam on and read the words aloud, hoping by doing so, I could somehow send them into the universe in just the way I heard them in my head and have you understand.

I sent the vlog to Lori and asked if I might post my reading of Dream Five here and she said yes. First I will post the written version below.

Because it is Friday Feedback, and because it is my page, today I'm breaking our usual FF rules. I'm not asking for any constructive critique of Lori's poem (or of my reading of it, thank you very much) but rather just offer it up for your appreciation and enjoyment.

You may also offer up an excerpt or poem of your own in the comments as always and tell me your wish for feedback.

So, then, below is Lori's poem and below that the video of my reading.

-gae

Mixed media dream dog by the multi-faceted Lori Landau.

Dream Five


The plane has already taken off but I am unseated. The rows are full of travelers, settling in, gazing out windows, opening books, leaning back, eyes closed, to listen to iPods. I pass by them on my way to the doorway that separates coach from a part of the plane I never knew existed but enter anyway. The thrust of the plane overcomes the drag and the plane is pushed up through the bright air. I am in some type cargo space, stripped clean of carpet and seating and storage. The floor is whitewashed, with blackened steel planks, held down by rivets and antique fasteners. It is the type of place that in another time might have housed sturdy parts: landing gears, propellers, spare luggage bins, but as of now, it is empty, save for two seats that are anchored to raw metal and facing me from across a divide. They are slatted chairs like you’d find at a movie theater or a ballgame, attached at the legs and bolted to the floor with antique studs. No safety belts, just old-fashioned straps made to wind around knees and waists like a harness, clumsily buckled, like arms that are poised to grab hold. The whole thing feels like a throwback to the 40s, like some kind of old military jet, it hums with the purgatory air of a waiting room. By the force of motion, I know we’re ascending. The plane shifts then stabilizes, and I eye the two empty seats, deciding whether or not they will hold me to gravity, when I see that my two long-dead dogs, Annie and Gypsy, who are very much alive, are here, just a few steps from the sealed exit door. To see a dog in your dream symbolizes intuition, loyalty, protection, two must be doubly so. I know this as well as I know that I am dreaming. I am overjoyed to see them, but I am aware that in waking life they are still dead. I realize that they are here to tell me something I’ve forgotten, some important information that has slumbered long within me. I look out the windows of the plane to see what direction we are going in, to assess the likelihood of turbulance, to see if the plane is trailing some message, skywriting symbols that will decipher why I am here, and where I am going, and I see through the cold glass what has been there all along, the altitude of blue sky and everything beyond, and I am flying through it, carried like Dorothy hurtling toward Oz ,holding on by my feet, rooted to the unseen, to that which has come before and all that is yet to come, soaring toward the unknown without a safety net, flying far over the articulation of earth, away from the bent elbows of women squatting long over muddy water, over corrugated fences and bitter branches weighed down by leaves and birdsong, over the long slow trains that run past crumbling walls etched with graffiti, lifting over the hinge of the horizon, on my way to waking.

What's Your Unfickle? (Pursuing the Horizon)

I admit it. I'm Aesthetically fickle. What I loved to read, watch, look at, wear, this year, are likely not necessarily going to be the same things that resonate with me next year. I get sick of old things and fall in love with shiny, new things, with few exceptions (including my own works of fiction).

Even the books and movies I "love" seem to have a time and place for me, meaning, the few times I've gone back to reread or rewatch them, they just haven't held the same allure. As such, I don't often try to do so.

Of course, to every fickle rule, there are exceptions. And here are a few of mine (list definitely NOT exhaustive):

I never get sick of:

from A Wrinkle in Time

ANYTHING Maira Kalman, especially her picture books;

A Wrinkle In Time, The History of Love, Pride & Prejudice, The Miraculous Journey of Edward Tulane, and most things Dr. Seuss;

The Graduate, Swingers, The Swimmer, A Little Romance; Bridget Jones's Diary (the movie) (I know, sue me, I think it's Colin Firth);

a few select poems by e.e. cummings;

and, for some reason, the longest hold out, this poem by Stephen Crane which has resonated with me for more than 30 years:

"I saw a man pursuing the horizon"


I saw a man pursuing the horizon;
Round and round they sped.
I was disturbed at this;
I accosted the man.
“It is futile,” I said,
“You can never —”
“You lie,” he cried,
And ran on.

I can't tell you exactly why this poem resonates for me year after year, only that I go back to it and when I do, it does.

What does this for you?

What's your unfickle?

-gae

inspiration and signs

Once you get a book published, people want you to talk a lot about your inspiration. And not in cliched generalizations. What made you write that book? How did you come up with that story. Writers should keep process journals, only because, by the time that book comes out, you've written one or two (or three) other manuscripts and the stories and reasons that were so clear at the time (if they ever were) have faded with time.

The Pull of Gravity (FSG, May 2011) has an Of Mice and Men theme running through it. Why I picked a classic, I definitely know, but why that classic, Of Mice and Men, I'm not completely sure, except for some vague and minor reasons.

All I know is once I picked it, I knew it was exactly the right choice. Not only for internal reasons, but I started to get small outward signs. I'd run across a sudden reference where it was seriously unexpected, Or, the biggest sign, while researching values on rare (scant even) original signed first editions with what's known as The Pendula included, I came across a copy inscribed by John Steinbeck to a man bearing the same unusual first name as the missing father the teens are searching for in the book. Even the last name was similar.

A few days ago, I woke up with an idea for a new young adult manuscript in my head. As always, I use the word idea loosely.

All I really knew is that it would be about two troubled teens and that it would have some important tie-in with Van Gogh.

I got the kids off to school and signed on to my computer to start writing with that overwhelming urge to get first thoughts down that any of us who write, know. I jotted three quick paragraphs and switched screens to attend to my morning ritual of email and facebook.

And there it was, my friend Lori's status update for the day: a quote by Vincent Van Gogh. And not any quote, but one that seemed to clearly resonate with the first paragraphs I'd just written, to mesh with the nebulous ideas swirling so frantically in my head.

Friday evening, I left Long Island for Washington DC for a whirlwind wedding weekend (and ten-plus hours of driving). Saturday morning, after breakfast -- and given that my mother, a talented artist, was with us -- we decided to squeeze in a visit to the Phillips Museum which happened to be around the corner from our hotel. We had heard it was a great museum (it is!) and my mother had always wanted to go.

As we reached the front entrance, I could see it was draped with a building-sized poster of Van Gogh's House at Arles. Sure, Van Gogh is a reasonably-obvious choice for any museum, on the other hand the museum was chock-full of amazing masters: Renoir, Cezanne, Degas, Monet, Manet, Bacon and Rubens, to name just a few.
  
When I reached the actual painting House at Arles, I stood for a while, feeling strangely connected. I've never spent a ton of time studying Van Gogh or anything, but certainly his paintings have always moved me. In person they are more beautiful.

There was no glass covering the work and I kept thinking how I could simply reach out and touch the very same paint Van Gogh touched and how magical that might be. The museum guard seemed to read my mind and hovered close by.

At any rate, I'm inspired now, and I hope the small signs continue. I believe in some minor way they let me know I'm on the right, if somewhat, mystifying path toward a new book.