On Saturday, I did one of my first authorly Events, the Big Brothers Big Sisters Friendship Celebration.  I have been a Big Sister for over 4 years now, and it’s been a fantastic element in my life.  I love being able to help someone directly, without any interface, and of course I love my little sister, who has grown from 8 to almost 12 in the time that I’ve known her (and she’s retained her sweetness—amazing!)  Naturally, I was thrilled to have a Nice and Mean Event for an organization I care so much about.

An Event is a somewhat different beast than a reading or school visit.  At an Event, you have a table representing Your Book and You, and you are the sole staff member (well, unless you are a bigger type than myself.)  You might sell books, and you might not.  Mostly, you are there to drum up enthusiasm for Your Book and You and to Meet People.   I have no problem with this. I like meeting people, especially kids and teachers, and this gives me a chance to interact.  But to do this, I have decided, I need a Gimmick, and my Gimmick is Nice and Mean Memories.  (Apparently my Gimmick for Talking About This is Capital Letters, but anyway.)

In addition to erecting my little area with books, bookmarks, and information on how to bring me into your school, I created a little clothesline to which people could affix their Nice or Mean Memories.  I had some left over from various bookstore appearances, but those are going to get retired, because I got so many great new ones from the Little Brothers and Sisters and their Bigs and parents, too!  I told them I’d put their words on the internet and make them famous by Monday night, so here I am, making good on my promise.

I’m starting with the mean memories so you can end on a sweet note:

Mean Memories

When my mama had got lock up my godmother cut my hair when I was 13.

5^th Grade—I was proud of my new gauchos…until I saw the “popular” girls giggling about them.

My mom had a dozen roses stolen from her.

Nice Memories

I the best student and the nicest.  My name is Demetrius.

My favorite nice memory is when my 10-year-old brother wrote me a letter for my 18^th birthday telling me how much I mean to him!  I love you, little brother!

A friend came to visit me & gave me a hug after a hard day at the doctor’s office.

When my mom tooke me and my mom’s friend and daughter to Six Flags!!

Me and all my family went to the zoo.

My best friend, John Mark, getting the ENTIRE cafeteria to sing HAPPY BIRTHDAY to me on my 16^th birthday!

All the time that me and my big sis cook together.

Joe is my friend at church and he is nice to me.

I did chors to help mi mom.  (Editor’s note: I feel compelled to remark that that was written by a 5-year-old on his own!)

———————————————————————————————–

I was surprised that so many more people wrote Nice memories than Mean ones.  I personally might have liked to vent (maybe this is why I am a writer?), but I guess they wanted to think about something happy on a Saturday morning—and who can blame them?

Mostly, though, I just felt good reading and re-typing these.  It’s such a good reminder, too, that even something as simple as taking your family to the zoo can count as a nice memory.  It’s possibly indulgent and self-referential to be inspired by things inspired by your book, but I did feel inspired, and honored, at the memories people shared.

If you have any Nice or Mean memories to share, feel free to add.

Thanks to WHAS 11 News for inviting me to be on the news at noon–it was so fun!

Edited to add: you can watch it here!

I hope everybody gets a chance to be interviewed in a news studio sometime, because it’s an uncanny experience.  The top 10 things I was surprisedly delighted by, in order of appearance:

1. The ceilings in the building are so high! Maybe 16 feet?  I tried to guesstimate, and maybe someone can set me straight, but walking in, I felt like a member of the Willy Wonka party peering around the door to the chocolate factory. (Tragically, no Gene Wilder singing “Pure Imagination,” but there were other pleasures to follow.)  It makes sense; they need to hang many lights at different angles, but I had never thought about that element before.

2. If it’s local news, at least, there will be no one fluffing your face with a blush-brush or dabbing on the pancake make-up. That was okay by me; I used the once-weekly make-up beforehand.  I had just been looking forward to that, along with some tissues tucked in the collar, but maybe I’m confusing that with, I don’t know, having an important role.

3. There may not be a green room, but you get to sit on the sidelines and  watch until it’s your turn. This was probably the best part.  Claudia, the news anchor, read the news just like they do on TV.  (Shocking, I know!)  But in between takes, she’d make funny comments.  When she finished introducing an Oprah episode about call-girls, she fanned her face said, “I’m so glad you showed the clip for that one–I didn’t want you to see my face!  My mother’s at home going, ‘Clow-dia!  Ach du lieber!’  I giggled, thinking of this incredibly polished woman and her strict German mother.

Claudia also made me laugh over the Tiger Woods divorce story.  When she finished it, she worried, “Did I pronounce his wife’s name E-lin, or Ellen?  No, I know I said E-lin.  Ellin has very long hair;  Ellen has very short hair.”  It took me a minute to get the pun (Ellen de Generes; vowel sounds), but then I had to hide my laughter, too.  I thought only reading teachers thought about long and short vowels, but apparently not!

4. You may meet other people in the studio with much cooler stories than your own.

I shared the warming-bench with the second-place winner of both the pie-baking contest AND the chocolate-treat baking contest at this year’s state fair.  It was a serious effort not to leap up and swipe a piece of the cake while no one was looking.

5. News comes in even during the broadcast, and the anchors have to adjust the stories and keep their composure.

During commercials and clips from the network, Claudia would check her Blackberry, and at first, I thought, ‘Oh, she’s probably texting her family.” Turned out she was getting new stories, including one about a shooting in town.  It seemed like they shortened other pieces to get that in, with little lead-time to do so, and they couldn’t react emotionally at all, or if so, only in a measured way.

6. It’s almost lonely in that studio.

It’s so big, and it was just Claudia, the weather and traffic reporter (Grant? Gene?  Sorry!) and the tech guy.  I always think writing is a lonely profession, but I wonder if it doesn’t feel even weirder to cheerfully report the news and bare your personality with no response!

7. The microphone goes up through your shirt!

Second base on the first date with a microphone, on local TV!  What would Claudia’s mother say?  And the worst part was that my shirt and the mike were black, so to make sure the mike wasn’t making my shirt look weird, I had to ask Claudia to help me adjust.  She was very nice about it, though.

8. The chairs have no backs, and you can’t see how you look beforehand!

I am much better at sitting up straight when there’s something to rest on, and I didn’t get to check my appearance until I was on TV, only to see that I was projecting an unflattering side view and didn’t know how to work around it!  I mean, I know the point is the book and not me, but I wish I’d had more winning cards here, other than what mom and dad gave me…

9. Unless you’re a criminal, they are nice enough to let you know what they’ll be asking you first.

I wouldn’t say I got the questions in advance or anything, but in the minute or so between when I sat down and when we went ON AIR, Claudia said we didn’t have a lot of time and asked me what I wanted covered.   I told her and she more or less stuck to that with a few other things thrown in.  Quel relief!

I got to talk about what I think the book teaches, where I get my inspiration, and how I’m grateful to be on the IndieNext list.  That was all we had time for, but it was fun while it lasted!

10. If you get to be on TV, for goodness’ sake, ask when it will be aired and record it!!

I just assumed it was going to be for a later broadcast and that I’d get home in time to record it, but apparently it was somewhat live–gah!  I guess I’ll pay the $$ to buy it, but I still feel like a doog.  (That was meant to say ‘doof,’ but ‘doog’ encapsulates it so much better.)

Ah, well–next time, I’ll check my side appearance and do my recon!  That is, if there is a next time.  I hope so; I really enjoyed myself.  Maybe Claudia wants me to come on to imitate my mother.  I can do a really good one of her talking about her pockabook, which is Rhode Island-ese for “purse.”  Or I can talk about long and short vowel sounds.  Or maybe I’ll write another book…

If you have any tips for future appearances, feel free to chime in!

At my reading on Saturday, a brave middle-schooler asked me, “If you had a daughter who was dealing with mean kids like the girls in your book, what would you do?”  I tried my best to answer the question in the moment (see my earlier post on this), but I went home and thought about it a lot.  Here’s my 8-step plan for dealing with meanness in school:

1. Don’t try to address the mean person directly

Usually I’m in favor of addressing people directly, but in the case of school meanness, I don’t think a talk from another kid is going to change the mean person.  I know that novels tell you that standing up to bullies is good, but I think that mean people are secure in their meanness and aren’t going to stop just because someone their age asks them to.

2. Do Involve a Teacher

Maybe I’m just saying this because I’m a teacher, but teachers care about how kids are doing and want to help.  Teachers want to create safe schools where kids feel good about themselves and are undistracted from learning. In addition, luckily for you, they love to be approached personally for help. (Teachers can be vain, just like anyone else.)  Also, while your powers may be limited to talking to the mean person directly, teachers can do sneaky things to limit bad behavior (more on this later.)  So ask your teacher if the two of you can find a time to chat, although a word about timing:

3. Don’t Wait Until Something Really Bad Happens to Ask for Help

We’ve all been there–that one week when everything just goes to you-kn0w-where and we want the adults to step in and do something.  Definitely ask for help if you’re in that situation right now, but if you’re not, now is the time to meet with your teacher.  Specific events of meanness get sticky; there’s a lot of blaming and denial and it’s hard for teachers to get at the truth and figure out the right thing to do.  Just choose an ordinary day.

4. Also, Try to be Brave Enough to Go in Alone

As a teacher, I always got a little suspicious when more than two kids approached me at a time, and three or more turned into a teary free-for-all.  Come to me one-on-one and you’ve got my attention and respect.  I also had an easier time responding to kids without their parents there.  It was easier for me to feel sympathetic and come up with good ideas because I didn’t feel like I was under pressure.  Imagine yourself as a teacher, and some brave student comes to talk with you alone.  You’d feel sorry for the kid and have the urge to help them, right?

5. Tell Your Story, With a Medium Number of Details.  Be Humble.

You might want to begin like this: “I’m not saying this to tattle, but I’m having a really hard time with so-and-so being mean to me this year.”  You can give a few examples of the ways this person is mean and how it makes life hard for you.  Does he or she make fun of you in the hall or hide your belongings? Does this person send around rumors that have caused fights with your friends?  Without going into too much detail, give some examples.  (If the teacher wants more specifics, he or she will ask.)

Then say, “I know I’m not perfect, and I’m sure there’s more I can do to be nice and include people.  But it would be great if this person could be just a little less mean.  And I wanted to tell you because I thought maybe you could help.”

6. Come Prepared with Suggestions

Before your talk, think: how could teachers be effective?  Do they need to monitor the halls, bathrooms, or lunch tables better?  Teachers are stationed at those places for a reason, but they get lazy and even shy and don’t wander among the lunch tables as much as they should.  Your request could spread the word that they need to do this more.  Maybe teachers need to assign partners in certain classes so one person isn’t always left out, or make sure that two people never get to sit near each other.  There’s no such thing as a school where the teachers’ only job is to teach.  If there’s meanness at your school, the teachers need to be doing their  job more thoroughly.

7. Also Ask the Teacher for Suggestions

After you’ve shared your stories and your request, pause so the teacher has a chance to think.  Hopefully, he or she will have some ideas but that may not be the case just yet.  If you feel like your teacher is stumped, you can provide assurance: “I don’t expect everything to change right now, because I know teachers are only human.  However, it would be great if things could get even a little better.  I even feel glad that we got to chat just now.  Can we maybe talk again later this month?”  This will signal to the teacher that a) you are polite and reasonable; b) you’ll be back, and they need to come up with some solutions!

8. If it Doesn’t Work the First Time, Keep Trying Until it Does

Maybe you chose a teacher who had the time and desire to help, but maybe not.  Try not to feel discouraged–just find another one to talk to.  Or approach your principal or the school counselor.  If you talk to two or more teachers and no one does anything, it’s time to involve a parent.  Share with your parent all the approaches you have tried and the suggestions you made.  They will probably be peeved that the teachers didn’t help you and will summon all that energy when they go in and talk to the adults at school.  I’m optimistic that that will get things moving, but I’m more hopeful that you’ll have already made some difference.

Whew!

That was a longie, I know.  But I repeat my question to the girl in the audience: on a scale of huge tiny, was that helpful?

And as for the rest of you–kids, parents and teachers–is there anything you would subtract or add?  I’d really like to know.

Saturday’s Reading at Destinations Booksellers in New Albany, IN!

I’m so grateful to Andy and Randy at Destinations Booksellers and to everyone who came indoors during a completely glorious summer afternoon to hear me read and answer questions about Nice and Mean.  Thanks especially to the cool mom who brought these fun kids!  (She’s taking the picture.)  They also won an author visit from me on behalf of their middle school, and I can’t wait to set it up, in part because I need to do a better job at answering one girl’s question.

The Q&A about the book veered toward the subject of meanness, and one of the girls, not pictured here, asked, “If you had a daughter this age, what would you tell her if people were being mean, the way they were in this book?”

“Ooh,” I said, “that’s a really good question.” (Apparently this is what I automatically say when I don’t have an answer ready, which is one sign of a good question.)  “It’s such a good question that I’m not even sure I can answer it well right now, but I’ll try.”

I said something to the effect that there will probably always be mean people and they’re not likely to change a ton, but if you are a nice person, people will notice.  Classmates and teachers will notice your including someone who isn’t well-liked, or going out of your way to support a friend, or having the character to engage people in interesting conversations.  And it may not pay off right now, in elementary or middle school, but as you get older, people will seek you out for friendships and positions of responsibility, and you will be a happier person than the person whose main means of pulling themselves up is putting others down.

“How’s that?” I asked the girl.  “On a scale of tiny to huge, how helpful?”

She gave what I can best describe as a look of kindness, although that’s not quite it.  “It’s okay for now,” she said.

Well, phew.  But I went home and thought about it some more, and I came up with a longer answer–so long, I created a new post.  But thank you, brave middle-school student, for asking me that question, and thanks to everyone else at Destinations Booksellers who created an environment where she felt comfortable asking.  I admire you all.

Coming soon: an 8-step plan for dealing with meanness in school.

A link to the fourth installment of my Sunday Serial story for the Louisville Courier-Journal, Not That Girl.  I am the link

The story so far: The Awesome Foursome — Jackie, Mel, Zoe and Becky — have always stayed tight friends. But what would happen when boys came into the picture? Things got weird when Zoe surprised everyone by hanging out with Cal, an older guy, at the movies, and looking like they might be a couple. As summer ended, and everyone headed back to school, would things be different for everyone?

There are also links to installments you may have (tragically) missed.

On another note, I had a great time on Saturday reading from Nice and Mean and doing Q&A at Destinations Booksellers in New Albany, Indiana!  Looking forward to posting pictures, congratulating the winners of the school-visit giveaway, and revising an answer to my very favorite question.

[That is an image from the unparalleledly wonderful movie Grease 2, featuring the song “Back to School.”  In case you didn’t know.]

For the first time in several years, I had my own back-to-school on the day itself!.  I taught middle-school English and drama for quite a chunk of years, but for the last few, have worked as a teaching artist through Actors Theatre of Louisville, visiting classrooms to teach playwriting.  This year, I’m doing a more formal partnership with a high school in town, so I got to attend the first day of school yesterday, and it actually put me in the mind of some fictional kids about to start the school year–Sachi and Marina, the girls of Nice and Mean.

I haven’t written about them in a while, I know; frankly, since I took a little appearances hiatus in the middle of the summer, I haven’t thought about them much, either.  But yesterday, seeing the neighborhood girls head back to school with little dresses and blown-out hair, I thought about what Marina and Sachi’s first day of school would have been like.  Nice and Mean begins a few week after school has started, but Sachi knew as early as the summer that her goal was to get into video elective, where her video would allow her to show people that she was more than just the stereotypical Indian honor-roll student.  Marina wouldn’t yet have been pissed off at her best friend to want to seek revenge, but I could certainly see her wanting to put together le perfect outfit.

I also thought about my own first days.  Like 11th grade, my second year at that school, when I came back from the summer relieved to find that the friends I’d made during the second half of the year were actually friends for real–and one of them had also crushed on a long-haired guitar-playing Brown University student who’d studied in Ecuador!  (She is still my best friend, and we still share a startling number of things in common.)  Or 8th grade, when I was determined to wear a flowered, Indian-print t-shirt on the first day, even though our school technically had a collared-shirt dress code.

(What the heck–why did it take so many scroll-downs to find the correct image for ‘granola shirt’?  Do you mean to tell me people aren’t using the same nomenclature from the late ’80s?)

It all led to me to a new poll (and frankly, I should have retired the old one a month ago; sorry)–what’s do you consider the best  thing about going back to school?

[Arg, I couldn’t get the poll to embed, so just look over to the left there–you should see the poll.]

You can vote for more than one thing and add your own answers. I look forward to seeing the results!

First of all, I am pleased to announce that I will be appearing at two more bookstores in the area this fall!

Saturday, August 21, 2pm

Desinations Booksellers

604 East Spring Street * New Albany, Indiana

Saturday, September 11, 4pm

Carmichael’s Bookstore

2720 Frankfort Avenue * Louisville, KY

I must be straightforward and report that there will not be cake.  (I know! And you were told there’d be cake!)  However, there will be something pretty much as good: a chance to win a free classroom visit from an author!  (Well, this is good if you are a parent, teacher or librarian.  If you are a childless plumber not taking any extension classes anywhere, I imagine that this offer doesn’t appeal as much as cake.  But moving on…)

It’s pretty simple: come to a Nice and Mean event (I will read and dazzle you with my super-secret strategy for spritely Q&A), and if you are a parent, teacher or librarian, you can enter a drawing to win a classroom visit from me. I’ll talk about the process of becoming a writer, discuss the skills that are crucial to being an artist (revision and attention to detail–sound familiar, teachers?), and answer questions.  (I can also read from the book, but often, the Q&A takes a while.)

What if you’re thinking, Oh woe, I do not live near enough to attend, so I cannot enter the drawing! or I am occupied both of those days!  Fear not.  Next month or so, I will hold a drawing online for those interested in a Skype visit.

Go, go, Nice and Mean!  See ya real soon!

Just wanted y’all to know that the second part of my middle-grade story, Not That Girl, is available online at http://www.courier-journal.com/article/20100809/FEATURES06/308090003/-1/COMICS/

They have part 1 there, too, in case you missed last week’s.  This week, you will learn the deep and hidden meaning behind the line, “Where’s your butt?”

Enjoy!

[note: this post was originally titled, “My first Friday Five!” but by the time I had reached 500 words, no Fives had yet appeared.  So it’ll be the Saturday Five. Or maybe Sunday.  We’ll see.]

No way!  I am participating in a meme–Friday Five! 

When an esteemed grad school classmate asked, “Jess, what is a meme?” I was not very well prepared to answer.  (“In literature, it’s like a theme, although I don’t know why they don’t just call it a theme.  But on the web, a ‘meme’ is like a thing you participate in–kind of like a theme.  Um, yeah.”)  So maybe I’ll just teach by example and say that Friday Five is a meme in which bloggers note on Fridays the top five things they’re grateful for that week.  (At least, I think that’s what they are. Quick, nobody disabuse me before I write this next post.)

Before I go ahead with my list (I know, you’re just dying of anticipation; I am, too, to see whether I have five or actually ten), I wanted to note that I’ve been thinking lately about how if all you knew about me was from the web, you’d probably think I did nothing but read, write, occasionally give readings, and watch Mad Men.  Not that I don’t spend a ton of time on these things, but there is so much of my life that doesn’t even enter in here because it seems like so much is verboten on the web, and with good reason.  I don’t want to jeopardize anything at any of my freelance jobs, and I don’t want friends to feel like they have to watch themselves around me because they might be quoted on here.  I also don’t want friends to feel left out if I write about other friends!  With all these things I don’t want to discuss, it leaves precious little that I can include.

And this is sad to me.  Because I really wish I could have written about the  afternoon a few weeks ago when I ended up hanging out with some people who had previously intimidated me and we had such a rockingly hilarious time that I’m still thinking about some of our jokes and cracking up.  Or the way a recent interaction with a previously prickly person turned out to be really terrific.  Because what if these women read this and thought, “Hey, why do you say I’m intimidating?” or “Well, I never knew you found me so annoying before!”  Argh argh argh.  I mean, it’s a good thing I write fiction, so I can get out some of these ya-yas, but when I’m supposed to have a public blog persona and then feel like I can’t write about anything that’s actually emotionally important to me, I think I end up sounding like a total hermit.

Hm. 437 words and still no Friday Five.  I think I’ll save them for tomorrow.  But at least now you may think I have some kind of social life.  But do any of you bloggers either worry about the impact of what you post, or fear that you seem like you have no life?

The serialized story I mentioned, Not That Girl, is now available online!  Especially if you’re a fan of Marina and Sachi, I hope you’ll check out the adventures of Jackie, Mel, Zoe and Becky, four best friends who prepare for the beginning of eighth grade–and some big changes.*

*Teaser/synopsis courtesy of the Louisville Courier-Journal.  I used to be good at writing those for my own work.  But I just tried to write one for this and it stunk so badly that I just went to the hard copy and ripped it off.  Thanks, Editor Dave!