Last week I drove my daughter to college

well, okay, she did all of the driving. It was her car and I had an awful head cold, basically plunked in the seat beside her and blowing my nose through an entire box of kleenex.

It's a nine-hour drive to Memphis where she goes to school, and where I went to school once, and I was feeling foggy and discombobulated about the trip, wanting to be there for my daughter as she moved into her dorm her senior year, but also reeling a little, to be honest, at how fast the time had flown by since my husband and I had driven her down to start college, at how fast time had flown by

since she'd started high school
and middle school
and elementary school
and preschool for crying out loud,

and if we're being honest here, since before she was born, because I'd spent the nine months of my pregnancy with her in Memphis, and I have vivid memories of myself waddling around downtown when some random guy walked up and asked if I was about to give birth any moment because it was painful to look at me.

Sorry, random guy for being pregnant and out in public. But I digress. My point is that the passage of time was hitting me, possibly compounded by my head cold, but I was trying to rally, keenly aware of the precious time ticking away, those hours, in the car, chatting with my daughter

about her plans for the upcoming school year and her friends and her boyfriend, all the while blowing my nose, my daughter's playlist playing in the background, an interesting blend of music I'd never heard in my life interspersed with songs I loved when I was in college thirty years ago.

That night my daughter and I uncharacteristically indulged ourselves by staying at a touristy overpriced hotel downtown, the Peabody, an institution in Memphis, a place I'd been many times for parties and to do the touristy thing there, which is to see The Ducks. (These are real ducks that live on the roof of the hotel, and every morning they come down the elevator and march up a red carpet and swim around in the fancy fountain in the hotel lobby.)

Twelve years living in Memphis and I had seen the ducks march and swim many times, but I had never before stayed the night in the hotel or sat in the lobby and had an over-priced drink. But that is exactly what my daughter and I did on the night before she started school, me, with a clump of kleenex in my hand and her, just-turned-21 and suddenly so grown-up.

We perused the menu and ordered frou frou drinks and feeling loopy on cold meds, I asked the waitress to throw in an order of a two-dollar plastic duck, which was served, looking very adorable, on a nest of bar snacks.

The next day, I helped my daughter move into her dorm and it was pretty clear she didn't really need me there. She and her roommate knew how they wanted to arrange things, and later when we went grocery shopping and to Target, I ambled along beside her, a strange feeling coming over me that some kind of transformation had occurred in our relationship,

still mother and daughter, because we will always be that, but what is it when your child becomes an adult in the blink of an eye, and in the next blink becomes

a friend?

In Which I Gush about My Retreat, Confess My Biggest Flaw, and Reveal My New Life Goal

And now a break from my regularly scheduled How to Get Published program to gush about my amazing retreat...

Of course, there was the usual recharging of the writing battery, the reminder of why I love writing books and being around others who have the same obsession and love. Where else can you discuss the elements of the Hero's Journey while noshing on gourmet appetizers or gripe about rejections while taking an invigorating walk in the woods? 

I go into every retreat expecting the restfulness and the opportunity to get a lot of work done without the constant interruptions and distractions of daily life.

What I always forget--even though it has happened to me EVERY SINGLE TIME I attend one of these retreats--is how much left I have to learn.

My biggest flaw as a writer (and probably as a person) is my reluctance to hear criticism. I am getting better at this! But there is always that icky feeling when someone tells me what's not working in a manuscript.

I had brought a novel with me for the plane trip--one of the huge tomes from my teetering TBR stack--Of Human Bondage by Somerset Maugham. This book is over 700 pages but I had the absurd idea that I could read it before I arrived at my retreat. Instead, I barely put a dent in it, and ended up reading bits of it each night and then on the trip home.

Not to get into the whole saga (it's a very good book, if somewhat in need of editing) but one passage jumped out at me, for obvious reasons:

The main character, Phillip, has decided to be a painter. He asks a friend to look at his pictures and the friend says no. Phillip is outraged and asks why. The friend answers simply: "People ask you for criticism, but they only want praise."

This made me laugh because it gets at the heart of my problem. When I ask someone to read my writing what I really want is for them to say that it is perfect just the way it is.

What I learned (again) on this retreat is that my writing is not perfect. (I know, ha ha, right?) but I can handle hearing about the weaknesses and flaws without crumpling or getting defensive. And more than that, I can get EXCITED about figuring out the solution.

It helped that all of the writers there were amazingly supportive and encouraging. 

And I can't say enough about the teacher at the retreat, Kim Griswell. I actually met Kim at an earlier retreat where she was randomly assigned as my mentor.

The first time she gave me a bit of criticism--and she was so NICE about it--I struggled not to cry or make a grouchy face. I'm sure I came off acting like a jerk. Later, after I had time to stew and consider, I knew she was right, and I apologized.

That was the retreat where I heard Newbery Winner Linda Su Park give a speech about how to accept criticism. You look at the person with a blank face and say one word: "Okay." (I wish I had heard that speech BEFORE I had my meeting with Kim.)

At this last retreat, I remembered the "Okay" part and braced myself for whatever Kim was going to lay on me (but inside, I confess that I was hoping she'd just gush about how perfect my writing was.) See, I really do have to learn this over and over.

I'm happy to say that there were no tears or grumpy faces. Okay, I did argue with her. A little. But only because I was trying to understand what exactly had confused her. She was a good sport about it, God love her. And I spent the rest of the week picking Kim's brilliant brain whenever I had the chance.

Here is another thing I have to learn over and over: often that bit of criticism is the key to everything--it's the Way In that was shimmering just out of my reach. Instead of making me weary, it resonates, because it is right. I almost cried during this retreat--not out of frustration, but out of relief. This project that I have been working on for YEARS may actually be one step closer to completion.

Toward the end of the week I got a string of emails from my publishing company. The first official review of Thin Space has come in, and it is a starred review from Kirkus. Not many people outside of the writing world know what this means.

But I can tell you, the writers at the retreat knew.

Kim read the review out loud and there I was, almost crying again.

The retreat was over all too soon and I was doing what I always do as I packed my suitcase, plotting how I could come back. 

Since I truly believe that you have to ask the Universe for what you want if you ever expect to get it, here is my new life goal:

Return, next year, as a teacher. 

The Big Break-up that Changed the Course of My Life

Over on YA Outside the Lines, we're blogging about Moments of Growth--in our characters and in ourselves. Here's a pivotal moment in my own life, that might serve as a cautionary/inspirational tale for a teen...

  

Confession: I once dated the same boy for nine years. 

The romance started innocently enough when the boy asked me to a middle school dance. We were both eleven years old. He passed me a note in class: Will you go to the dance with me? Circle yes or no. I circled yes.

Our relationship ended over the phone when we were twenty. In between was lots of soap opera-y drama--teary break-ups followed by desperate attempts at reunions. Everyone, including our parents, thought we belonged together and would eventually get married.

There were a variety of contributing factors that led to my falling into and sticking with a long-term teen relationship. Here are a few: 

• I didn't have the most stable home-life, and this relationship--rocky and ridiculous as it was for most of the time--was one sure thing I could count on
• My father died when I was young. This may be the biggest factor. And now that I see my own daughter and the very cool relationship she has with her Dad, I know how essential a father is when it comes to a girl's developing sense of self. Her identity as a woman, whether she believes she needs a guy to complete herself and fill some emptiness, or not--all seem inextricably tied to how the first man in her life, her father, treats her.
• The weirdest aspect of my relationship with this boy was how fated it felt. The longer we dated, the more it seemed we were meant to be together. Every time we broke up, it was always the thing we would say when we got back together. "We've been with each other so long, how we can quit now? We're worth working on," we said. As if we were a married couple and not two sixteen-year-olds.

Every so often reality would creep in on me or else bash me upside the head. What we had in common when we were eleven (not much, really, except we both thought the other one was cute) and what we had in common at age twenty changed drastically. Example: I majored in English in college. He failed high school English. I could give you a billion more examples, and it is clear now how wrong we were for each other, but back then, it was like I was slogging around in a muddy fog. I could not see myself and this boy for what we were.

Some part of me must have though, and I marvel at that part. It made me apply to a college 1250 miles away. Oh, it would've been so easy and expected to go to the school in my state. An added bonus: my guy told me he'd be hanging out with me there all the time! Never mind that the place was cheaper, which would make things simpler for my single working mom too.

But I went away. Even though I was scared out of my mind. I think I held onto the guy at this point out of sheer terror. It was nice to have a boy back home waiting for me if this whole going off to college thing fell through.

Going far away to college (and I HIGHLY recommend this, kids!) was like waking up from that muddy foggy dream. There is great freedom in starting over in a place where not one other soul knows you. Hey, you can be anyone you want. You can be alone for the first time ever and realize you won't fall apart.

You can pick up the phone one day and break up with your boyfriend of nine years.

The week leading up to when I did the deed, I was a manic wreck. I couldn't eat. I couldn't sleep. I wasn't just breaking up with a boy, I was tearing apart the expected pathway of my life.

The funny thing was I think he was almost relieved when I told him. I am not saying that I didn't break his heart. (Or that he hadn't broken mine, either, multiple times) Just that we were both weary of it, of each other, and someone, finally, was going to have to put the relationship out of its misery. I am not sure, exactly, how that someone was me, how I mustered the courage to say what needed to be said and stand firm. But somehow, I did it.

And after, for weeks, I walked around in an excited daze, grinning like a loon.

If I could do this thing--change the entire trajectory I had been on since the age of eleven, geez, what else could I do?

I really could be anything I wanted to be. I could live anywhere I liked. I could follow any dream. There was no prescribed path for my life, after all, and every option in the world was suddenly open to me.

(One half of the once happy couple)