So Julie started #teamTEENauthor and the initiation is a CHALLENGE and you know I kind of LIKE challenges, so I said yes. Only, ahem, this one is truth or dare. Here’s what she says:

“In order to kick-start my blog rebirth after it’s long drawn out death, I’m challenging my fellow YA author friends to create an identical Truth or Dare post and let their readers pick a TRUTH question or a DARE in which we swear to provide photographs, video footage or some evidence of performing said DARE…in the case of a “DARE FAIL” the author will post the photo shown below on their blog for no less than one week regardless of whether it matches the blog’s color scheme. This game could be your ticket into my exclusive club, teamTEENauthor. If you aren’t a soon-to-be published or already published teen writer, you can still play your own game of truth or dare on your blog. Post the link to your own post in the comment section and I’ll add you to my list of dare devils who took the challenge.” (And here’s the photo.)

So, for the purpose of these questions, I’d like to introduce you to HYPOTHETICAL BOYFRIEND, since a lot of them are about having one. Well, a real boyfriend, that is, not a hypothetical one. Oh, move along, would you? Nothing to see here.

MOST COMMON TRUTH OR DARE QUESTIONS

1) If your significant other said it was alright would you cheat on them? 

No, because I’m too in love with Hypothetical Boyfriend to want to be with anyone else. My theory on this is pretty straightforward: if you find yourself considering straying, look hard at why. If you’re bored or just attracted to other people, do the hard work in your actual relationship to fix things. If the problem really is that something’s wrong with your relationship – your needs are unmet, you’re not compatible – get out of the relationship. You may have a lot invested in it, but ultimately, you’ll be better off. It sounds scoffingly simple, and on one hand, it is. On the other, if you’re thinking about cheating, maybe simplifying would help. It’s never too late to be honest with yourself and others.

2) What is there about your boyfriend/girlfriend (spouse) that embarrasses you?

Hypothetical Boyfriend is out-going, like me, so maybe he sometimes is a little too exuberant when meeting new people. Could be awkward if people don’t know he’s joking around with them.

3) What is more important than money?

SEE EVERY BLOG POST I’VE EVER WRITTEN. Or, here, allow me to sum up: Be true to yourself. Don’t let anyone make you feel less than, whether it’s for their attention or money or popularity. Authenticity, love, and fulfillment through the pursuit of your dreams are all way more important than money.

4) When have you loved some one who has not loved you back?

I’ve LIKED people who have not liked me back, but I don’t know about love. I’ve also been in relationships where we liked each other but not to the same degree.

5) When was the first time you had your heart broken?

DARE!

6) When is it alright to mix love and business?

I’m a writer. I don’t think you could take love out of writing. Oh, you mean, like that. Well. Hypothetical Boyfriend is a writer because writers tend to “get” other writers better than laypeople.

7) If you were given a chance to become invisible for one day, what would you do with this ability?

I thought SO hard about this question. And, yes, I WOULD SO DO THINGS I SHOULDN’T. I would wander around backstage areas I am not supposed to be. I would be that person. But I would also just use it to gather inspiration. I would enjoy not being seen to eavesdrop better, to observe moments people don’t know anyone can see. I would spend some time in the middle of a crowded place and just BE.

8) If you could see 24 hours into the future what would you do with this ability?

Well, I have a whole book about a girl who can kind of DO that, and kills herself because of it. Perhaps you’ll read it when it comes out next year? What would I do with it, personally? Oh, god. I want to say I wouldn’t be all amoral and check the lottery but I … probably would. Just one 24-hour period? Yeah, I would. If I could see the future all the time I wouldn’t but I’d feel like I needed to take advantage while I could. Sorry, Mom, I know you tried to raise me better.

9) Who was your first crush with?

My first crush was in middle school on the “class heartthrob” who EVERYONE had a crush on. I  can’t remember if I actually liked him or if I just liked the idea of liking him. It was middle school, I’m not sure there’s much difference.

10) When is it alright for your boyfriend/girlfriend to lie to you?  

I don’t ever want Hypothetical Boyfriend to lie to me. He can refrain from telling me things until suitable times, but no outright lying to me. My relationships must be built on an open foundation for them to work.

11) If you were the opposite sex for one day, what would you look like and what would you do?

Me as a guy? Save us all. I honestly can’t imagine this! My mind isn’t even drawing a blank, it’s just laughing at me. DARE?

—

Wanna Join My Game?

So, you want to play in my game? Here’s what you do, answer one of the above truth questions in the comment section then it’s your turn to ask me…or offer a DARE.

In my head I’ve been divorced for eight months, since the day the court recognizes as the last one of my marriage. But the divorce itself was only finalized this month. February 8. It’s such a random date. 2/8/2012. Anyone who knows me knows how much I love even numbers and yet I can’t help liking these.

I’ve been trying to sum up what this means to me, but I keep coming up somewhat bemused.

The papers I can’t stop staring at, the official court wording and the notary seal and the judge’s signature – I have no idea who you are, Judge Brennan, but thank you for signing off on my divorce – they mean something different to me than simply the fact I’m no longer married. They’re not just the legal technicality to something that happened last year, though they are that.

They are proof, evidence, that I claimed my life. That I am strong and brave and honest with myself and am allowed to have needs and to be myself and so much else of what I spend my time blogging about. They state clearly, life is to be lived. Not just passed through. Not hugged along the sidelines of, crept through. Lived. (I finally started crying now. I wondered if I would get through the post without doing so. Nope.) These papers are precious.

And I have so much to say to so many people who were – are – affected by these papers: I’m sorry. I’m sorry I handled things poorly. I’m sorry I couldn’t tell you the truth sooner, or at all. I’m sorry I hurt you. I’m sorry you hurt. I’m sorry I can’t talk to you, don’t know how to talk to you, don’t have anything to say to you. I’m sorry the things you thought we had in common, we don’t, and the person you thought I was, I’m not. I’m sorry it took me so long to figure that out. I’m sorry.

I have so much to say to so many other people, the ones who’ve handed me pieces of myself over the past eight months: thank you. thankyouthankyouthankyou.

When the papers came, I dug out the books I read last year, the ones that really helped me. In Contemplating Divorce, Susan Pease Gadoua writes,

Like me on the diving board, you may have stayed in your marriage and contemplated all that could go wrong if you divorced and all the reasons you shouldn’t jump. It’s a healthy form of self-preservation to consider the ways in which you or others around you could get hurt. Until something forces you to jump or until you can find a logical reason to risk everything you’ve worked so hard for, you stand there on the ledge.

As you perch on the precipice of what feels like a thirty-thousand-foot-high cliff, you can’t imagine landing on your feet. You can’t even see what you would land on, so why in the world would you willingly jump into this abyss? If you’ve been in an unhappy, unfulfilling, or unhealthy marriage, there is a reason to jump: to get you to a different place in your life.

I jumped and I got to a different place. It hasn’t been that long, or that hard, as these things go, but I’m tired, looking at these papers. I’m happy, even if it’s a subdued happy, glad not to deal with lawyers (even nice ones), glad to have gone through this even when it hurt. I am glad not to be on that ledge anymore, grateful for all the pebbles that piled up till I tipped myself over. The loss still lingers, will linger. I am not without scars. But you know what I am more than anything?

Optimistic. My hope today is not a fragile thing; today it holds worlds. I can’t wait to see what’s in them.

My friend Kate brought Magic Hat beer to our New Year’s celebration. I’ve mentioned this before, but it still resonates with me, the synchronicity. They put little sayings on their caps. I opened the one that said, “What exactly are you waiting for?”

There is a reason to jump.

I didn’t remember that I had talked about love in my post on loss, to include in the love post or I would’ve, but it fits better here.

That’s why love is the scariest, absolutely hands-down, the scariest endeavor ever. The more we love, the more we have to lose, and haven’t we just been over how much that sucks? I once defined love as leaning over the abyss and hoping nobody pushes you. (I’m such a romantic.) But I find love and loss to be at opposite ends. Because love is an opening, a daring, a belief. It’s taking broken pieces and seeing beauty in them anyway. Love is the bravest thing we can do. I think it can transcend itself; that in taking that risk, if we do it right, love can be safe. That’s why I put it opposite loss. Because it can unite, calm, instill hope. Everything that loss shatters, love can restore.

This is why I think love and hope are so entwined. Love is hope in action.

I am in a position to be hopeful. My divorce is nearly final. My finances are sorted. My book is almost out of revision; I’m working on new projects. I’m looking forward intentionally. I have wants, and some needs. I allow myself that.

My hope is a fragile thing. It balances on a razor’s edge. I am fearful for it, fearful to indulge it. To let it grow any bigger. I am afraid to hope, a little.

And yet I do, anyway. I hope recklessly, even painfully. I let it swell and totter and maybe even get nicked every now and again. My hope flutters like paper-thin butterfly wings. Beautiful and delicate.

But what choice do I have?

I cannot remain tight in the bud (Nin). I cannot let the fear win. Hope is like faith. If you had a guarantee, you wouldn’t need it. That’s the entire point.

I want to believe in things. For all the older-than-years I feel and can come across, I am still young. I am sometimes naive, and innocent. In this I try to be. I want to believe. So I do, if you give me enough to hope, to believe in. Tawna asked about your favorite words, and mine were, “I believe in you.” They have so much power. To have someone believe in me – wow. It’s humbling, so for me to offer it to someone else – it’s hope, pure hope. It’s me saying, I trust you with a part of me that can break, and I will forgive you if you break it, but I don’t think you will.

Even now as I sit in this Starbucks, caffeine absorbing into my pores, the lunch rush burbling around me, I take a deep breath and HOPE, hugely. My tag says “Ideas are not people,” to remind me we have to invest in people, not ideas, that ideas don’t make things happen, people do. That concepts don’t give hugs when you’re sad. But they are fuel; they are compass; they are the things that light us up.

I am alight with hope. Right now, in this moment. Whether or not what I hope comes to pass is, in this moment, nearly irrelevant. It is for then. It is not now. Now, I believe in you.

I figured I would be one of those miserable single bitter people, but no. Not my style. I had a valentine, a friend, and really, why be miserable? There’s nothing good in choosing that, in giving in to it. Instead I found myself tweeting ideas about love all day, so here I’m going to compile them and talk a little more about what it means to me.

One of my all-time favorite quotes is this one from Lao Tzu: “Being deeply loved by someone gives you strength, while loving someone deeply gives you courage.”

Then there’s Frost: “We love the things we love for what they are.”

And Pablo Neruda captures exactly what I think real love looks like: “I love you without knowing how, or when, or from where. I love you simply, without problems or pride: I love you in this way because I do not know any other way of loving but this, in which there is no I or you, so intimate that your hand upon my chest is my hand, so intimate that when I fall asleep your eyes close.”

I remembered some lines from my debut, AFTER YOU, I had to share for the holiday. “Love gives us the courage to live whether that means staying or going, but it only ever means life.”

Hm. Are you seeing a theme, too?

I couldn’t be miserable on Valentine’s day when love is so intimately entwined with authenticity and identity and hope. My twitter bio says I believe in magic, chocolate cake, vodka – and love. This is true. I believe in love down to my toes, into the very core of who I am. I’m not going to trumpet all you need is love or love conquers all – I don’t believe that, incidentally. Loving someone is not enough; respect and openness and action fill love out. But when real love is present those things flow from it, with it.

Love can hurt but never be ugly. There’s a book called If It Hurts It’s Not Love, and I haven’t read it but I thought, that doesn’t make sense. Love is being vulnerable, is allowing people close enough to hurt. Love is caring so much for someone that you ache for them when things are low, and that hurts. Love is never ugly, though, because real love is honest, is respectful, is active, has hope. The circumstances of love can still be ugly – star-crossed, or what have you. But love itself? No.

I believe if you love someone you want what’s best for them even when it rips your own heart out for them to have it. I believe we owe ourselves the chance for real love, to both give and receive it. I believe shielding someone you love from truth because it will hurt does everyone a disservice.

I believe we all fail at love but that there is beauty in learning from that. There is integrity in admitting failure, in knowing when something doesn’t and can’t work. Whenever anyone comments on my divorce as a failed marriage, I bristle. I’ve talked before about how I think longevity is a poor indicator of a marriage’s success. How is it failure to stop beating a dead horse? To give M and I both a chance at real love with people who will get us? To stop pretending, to stop hurting each other for abstractions I don’t even believe in (religion)? My biggest failure was in not recognizing and acting sooner. Divorcing M was probably the most loving thing I could’ve done for  him, ironically.

Love demands to be celebrated, whether it’s romantic, kindred, amicable. Love is everything good in this world. There’s a reason I call my blog readers and friends “lovelies.”

My mind is a hamster wheel. It’s perpetually spinning – picking at things, fretting, reassessing and trying to think of what it missed, trying to account for all variables. It is an obsessive mind, with somewhat compulsive tendencies. It can beat a dead horse to dust and still not stop. I annoy even myself with it sometimes. It frets. It frets frets frets. Worry. All I do is worry. About money, about my friends, about my health (hypochondriac, of course. psychosomatic, certainly), about my writing. I have reasonable worries – bills – and unreasonable worries – every night when I go to bed, I fear I am going blind. (I have really bad eyes. REALLY bad. And the eye strain gets worse every year.) I worry about things I have absolutely no control over and things I do.

I exhaust myself mentally and then let it spill over into physically. Last week I walked around like a shell-shocked trauma victim because too many things piled up at one time and defeated my coping reserves. Normally I can do okay but too much at once is too much at once, yanno?

And I do not know how to stop it. I have tried exercise, as you know, and that helps a lot. My eating has been not so good, stress eating lots of junk, but on the whole I’m okay. I try meditation but given the nature of the beast you can see why it doesn’t work. So.

I am appealing to you, internet. What do I do?

And while a therapist would be lovely, I don’t have insurance, so please to suggest other things. And this is not something just “be kind to yourself” can fix. I may as well have stock in dark chocolate and bubble bath at this point, though by all means get a discussion going for more ideas on those kinds of solutions. Those short-term relaxations DO help – in the short term.

Lemon Ricotta Muffins
makes 1 dozen

• 7 9/10 ounces all-purpose flour (1 3/4 cups)
• 3/4 cup granulated sugar
• 2 1/2 teaspoons baking powder
• 1/4 teaspoon salt
• 3/4 cup part-skim ricotta cheese
• 1/2 cup water
• 1/4 cup olive oil
• Zest of one lemon
• Juice of one lemon
• 1 large egg, lightly beaten
• 2 tablespoons sugar (optional)

1. 1. Preheat oven to 375°.
2. 2. Weigh or lightly spoon flour into dry measuring cups; level with a knife. Combine flour and next 3 ingredients (through salt); make a well in center. Combine ricotta and next 5 ingredients (through egg). Add ricotta mixture to flour mixture, stirring just until moist.
3. 3. Place 12 muffin-cup liners in muffin cups; coat with cooking spray. Divide batter among muffin cups. Sprinkle sugar over batter. Bake at 375° for 16 minutes or until a wooden pick inserted in center comes out clean. Cool 5 minutes in pan on a wire rack.

from Maureen Callahan of Cooking Light.

Some tips: The original recipe calls for turbinado to be sprinkled over the muffins, which I’m sure is divine, but I never have it. I either omit and they’re fine or just sprinkle some regular sugar, which makes the tops soft and sweet and lovely. Up to you. Also the original recipe gives you specific amounts of lemon juice and zest. Pfft. I get one decent sized lemon, grate the zest off into a mixing bowl, squeeze the juice in, as much as can be juiced, pick out the seeds, then I beat in an egg and proceed from there. Also, the tip to spray to muffin cups is brilliant and I do it all the time now. The texture will be kind of spongy from the ricotta, but trust me it’s perfect. I have not tried substituting anything for the oil because the other flavors are so delicate I worry it would upset the balance, and they’re pretty healthy even using the oil. And next time I make them I will try to remember a picture.

I have a confession: I used to tell people I didn’t have a sense of humor. I like to laugh as much as the next person but I’m not a bust-a-gut kind of girl. The things most people call funny I roll my eyes at. I would say what sense of humor I do have is wry or ironic.

Turns out I was wrong. I was just being stodgy. Since my divorce, sometimes all I want to do is laugh. It makes me feel better. It really, really does. It makes me happy. Good books that aren’t all omg rip a piece of my heart out are so very important to the mental and emotional health of pretty much everyone. They allow us to be more well-rounded, not just the sad books. People like me get caught up in the sad books too easily and we need to come up for air. We need the happy books more than anyone.

But I never read any. I never knew any humor authors I liked, and “light” books in general weren’t my thing. I’d rather read action-packed genre fiction. Or omg rip a piece of my heart out books. Or, well, anything. I was kind of snobby.

And then I became friends with Tawna Fenske and read Making Waves and the rest is history. Because, wow. I needed that book. I didn’t realize how much until I read it. Not just to cheer me up but to expand my thinking. Humor books are unashamed. See, omg rip a piece of my heart out books get a pass to be unashamed. They rip your heart out. They deal in Important Things and so they can be as in your face as they want. Humorous or “light” books? They get deemed “over the top.” What rubbish. A book that winks at you is a rare thing. They tell you to go on and do something for no good reason. To do something, anything, at all. They stretch verisimilitude, or they ignore it completely on purpose to do their own thing.

Tawna is especially good with this. In Getting Dumped, her Kindle serial choose-your-own-adventure romance – YES REALLY – she has characters Burt and Ernie. Wink. She has the best, most outlandish supporting cast you’ve ever seen. She has a yummy Brit (VOTE FOR COLLIN) and lots of kissing and a possible mob boss and trash and it’s just SO MUCH FUN you can’t help but love it. Truly, Tawna’s knack for making the slightly – or completely – absurd plausible and real and getting you to root for it knows no limits and has no comparison. I heart her writing.

In fact, I email her regularly while I’m reading. 9/10 my emails start like this: “TAAAWWWWWNNNNNAAAAAAA! :flail:” And my little grinch heart expands a couple sizes at whatever is making me flail. I need my grinch heart to expand so when I read the omg rip a piece of my heart out books, there’s still something left in there.

Today’s topic is deadlines. Please don’t run away; this won’t hurt too much, I promise!

I’ve always loved deadlines. I like concrete things; I love goals. I’m competitive and slightly OCD so, really, deadlines are good to me. I’m one of those people who will say, I’ll have something to you by Friday and then personally try to beat my own goal and get it to you on Wednesday. Cos I’m like that.

So it may surprise you, lovelies, to know that working to an external deadline for an editor does still terrify me.

I know. Weird, right?

But there’s so much out of my control; if I miss my own deadline I beat myself up but it’s only me whom I’ve failed. Working for an editor, there are other people counting on me!

My experience with Editor of Awesome Kate has been a good one. My first revision was due October 15th, and I emailed her around the 7th that I’d finished my pass but I wasn’t happy with it, and she said to just keep going into the next pass. (Deadline tip – communicate, communicate, communicate!) I did, and sent it back, even though I still wasn’t happy with it. Something still wasn’t clicking. Finally, I got my notes back around Christmas on that and it did click, and we talked after the new year. I told her I’d have it for her by this week, Feb 3. But something had clicked, so I knew I’d be done early. (Deadline tip – always give yourself a cushion!) Sure enough, I sent it in last week, on Wednesday. I feel much better about it. We’ll see what she says, though!

Deadlines are all about time management. They have nothing to do with writing skill at all. It’s saying, okay, I usually revise a draft in three weeks, but don’t forget you have that trip to visit your sister, and just in case something happens, maybe add in an extra two weeks. And then – the kicker – sticking to your time management schedule. If you know you revise a draft in three weeks when you’re not going out a lot, then don’t suddenly morph into a social butterfly or you’ll miss your deadline. (Deadline tip – it’s okay to have a life while on deadline; just account for it!)

I’m a bit of an odd case here. I was in revisions for Suzie on AY when my mom died. I’ve been navigating a divorce the whole time I’ve been revising for Kate. Both have told me it’s okay to take my time, etc, but frankly, it’s been good distraction and having something to work on and then have something to show for it is gratifying. My head’s not always in the game – my concentration isn’t what it used to be, especially now that I’m not just at home all the time. But so long as I account for it, I’m okay.

So, tips for writing to deadline:

The revision cave is real. Even the busiest writers will hole up the closer we get to a deadline. I’m not sure it’s because of the deadline, really. For me, it’s just the end of the book is in sight and I’m IN it and I want to get there. So – know that, expect it, don’t plan any vacations or have friends come to visit when you know you’ll be finishing a book.

Shake it up. Do whatever works. If you usually plan out your revision and you just aren’t feeling it, toss your plan and play with it. Give yourself permission to be imperfect, even in revision. Because even when a book is done, it’s still never right. As you grow as a writer, you’ll find even more things to change, but you can’t keep going. Eventually the book’s done, and it’s imperfect, and it’s yours.

Sometimes the deadline is the only thing to tell you that.

I was waiting for a dear friend to meet me the other day, so I had Joss’s book with me. I sat down on a bench across from the Coldstone Creamery and began to read. See, I believe in staring down my weaknesses. Books are the same. A good book is a war on yourself. I read the first eight pages of Joss’s book, its prologue, and had to set it down because I couldn’t swallow for the lump in my throat. (I had to set Tawna’s book down after the first ten, too, but that was because I was laughing so hard I couldn’t see straight for the tears.)

I could easily have not picked it back up, if I’m honest. The book promised to wring me dry. I just read another book like that last week, and am still a bit shaky. (Enter Tawna’s book as antidote.) I could have stopped reading Joss’s and been oblivious, and happy, and, uh, able to swallow. But I read to feel. I need to read good books – comedic or otherwise. I must experience this story. The pain we explore through reading primes us to deal with it in our own lives, gives us an outlet to respond to ours through pondering these stories, characters, moments. I can feel myself expanding as I read, my heart stretching to hold it.

Reading is like that. It is not safe, nor lazy, nor luxurious, really. Even humorous books like Tawna’s stretch you, only they do it with positive emotions like love, joy, satisfaction – what do these concepts mean to us, not abstractly but literally? when we lie in bed at night staring at the crack in the ceiling, we are not pondering the absolute meaning of truth, the metaphysical quality of life that makes us human. We are on the front lines of that life, and we are regretting a harsh word, hoping for tomorrow’s phone call, tossing and turning our beliefs into moments. Books give us other people’s moments for consideration. They enrich us with possibilites and that is why they are dangerous.

It is not in thinking that we are in jeopardy, but in feeling.