mind the gap

Just saying.

Don't go in there.

This picture is of a real place that pops up from time to time in my book The Marbury Lens. And this will, inevitably, become a very convoluted blog post, but if you look very closely, the address to the right has an advertisement for The Guardian.

What does that have to do with anything? Well, in today's Guardian, Robert McCrum writes about maintaining a gap between novelists and their readers... and what kinds of consequences manifest when authors pay perhaps too much attention to what their readers -- or the markets -- want and expect.

Interesting stuff, and well-suited for a writer who can get as pouty and self-destructive as I.

I've written how I hate the thought of my being "branded" -- and that the four books I have written/coming out are all as different from one another as butter is from golf balls. In a recent email exchange with my editor, I said that I never have, and never will, write to the market. That's why you won't find a dragon, vampire, nor a single wand (sorry, Nora) in any of my books -- not that there is anything definitively wrong with vampires, dragons or wands. I just don't do it.

Maybe I'd be happier if I did... I don't know.

And I like meeting readers and other authors when I attend Literary Festivals (as McCrum calls them) and such, but I also am wracked by intense feelings of I-should-be-sitting-in-the-corner-rocking-back-and-forth-catatonic-trance-dude-because-I'm-having-a-panic-attack-and-everything-I-say-is-meaningless-and-stupid kind of thing going on.

Now, be serious... anyone who's ever seen (and forgotten) me at one of these events invariably gets deeply creeped out by me.

I don't know. I have a broken foot. I'm in a foul mood. I just deleted my account on Goodreads and came this (holds up two fingers) close to deleting my Facebook as well.

ugh.

I better get outside.

I mean, limp outside.

And mind the gap.

(award)for the best(award)(ryan dean)

So, a friend of mine goes to this public high school, and the other night they held their annual "Senior Awards Night."

The whole senior class was there. Because everyone got an award. Little certificates verifying how worthy every single kid was in drafting or R.O.T.C. or "good attendance." I guess if they couldn't have thought up something positive about every single kid, they would have had to end up giving an award for being so good at not getting an award for anything.

Well, to be honest, not every kid in the senior class was there, even if every kid did get his or her name called. Guess who the largest percentage of absent recipients was?

Boys.

We hate crap like that. There is absolutely no value in giving everyone an award. We like winning, but only when winning equals you come in first -- not tied with 400 other kids for first, which is the exact same thing as tying for last.

This, again, is one of the HUGE things wrong with schools today, and it's one of the things that is turning boys away from education -- the lack of meaningful and beneficial competition.

Duh again.

sleep tacos(ryan dean)

I found out that if you put enough Sriracha Sauce in a taco, it is possible to successfully replace the meat, entirely, with a fistful of Tylenol PMs.

So, I finally got Drew off to dreamland (make that DreamLand Lite, which is the version that includes breathing... I checked a few minutes ago), and I will be taking over the blog today.

He told me I could, anyway. But he's been kind of tense and [makes airquotes, which really should be an HTML tag] forgetful [stops making airquotes] lately.

Anyway, I thought I would riff on this "Boys and Reading" thing he's been writing about, since, as a high school student with the XY option, I have some relevant experience in the matter.

Here's the problem with most schools, as I see it. On the one hand, school administrators try to push their programs as being "rigorous," but doesn't Rigor mean, by definition, that some kids won't make it? After all, not every salmon gets to make it up the stream to spawn.

Kind of sad for the salmon, isn't it? I mean, they spend all their lives going through puberty, then finally get the big chance to, like, totally orgy it out so they can die with satisfied expressions on their gillslits, and a lot of them end up as bear sushi on the commute. But if every salmon got to spawn, there would probably be some genetically inferior examples of fish out there... you know, the ones with enormously big foreheads and really close-set eyes, kind of like some of the kids in my English class, who could actually serve as effective poster children for the This-is-why-you-shouldn't-drink-vodka-while-breastfeeding-your-fucking-baby campaign. If there is one.

Okay, so there's the "rigor" myth. At the same time as there's this No Child Left Behind commitment. Which means that schools have to lower the bar for the general fish population to the extent that every salmon will get to spawn.

And you know what that looks like.

Not pretty.

There used to be some fairly formidable obstacles in our stream: Hawthorne, Dickens, Melville, Hemingway, Faulkner. But now schools won't teach those works because not enough fish will make it to the big show. But the fish that would have gotten through that stuff (and enjoyed the challenge) end up getting lost and discouraged.

Remember... boys, whether they've got fins or feet, LIKE challenges and competition. We like it when some of us don't make it. It's part of being a boy.

Duh.

So, instead of dying with the contented fishy face, we're dying with the morning-after Oh-my-god-what-was-I-thinking-last-night-please-tell-me-my-children-are-not-going-to-look-like-THAT? expression of horror.

insanity update

This is what happens. Two days, no sleep. I broke my foot. Why do things always hurt worse at night, when it's quiet?

I am a streak runner. I haven't missed a day of running in about ten years. And now I have a broken foot. I did a couple miles on it yesterday and thought I was going to die. Not sure what I'm going to do today.

Two days ago, I sent my most recent novel to my agent, who is currently in Japan, and my editor, in New York. I read it again yesterday and I found three mistakes.

This is why feet get broken.

Yes, letting go makes for craziness. I don't know what I'm supposed to be doing with the big hole in my day that had been occupied by getting this thing out of me.

I have a stack of books that are waiting to be read.

Maybe.

Don't be surprised if this blog gets taken over by someone else in the next couple days.

(boy) troubles(2)

Did you use a Sharpie when you signed those boys' foreheads, Michael? [see yesterday's comment]

Michael Grant's comment touches on so many of the ideas behind this whole thing I see. First of all, you have to recognize that innate boyness of having someone who's giant and scary sign parts of your body. I'm going to guess there weren't too many girls waiting in line to get inked on their hides. So, there is a connection that can be made, and these guys are looking for it... but there's just not a lot of opportunities for them to find it.

Looking at this through a kind of macroeconomic lens, I think we can draw a couple of fair relationships about why we've been losing boys (in fact, harming them, in terms of their literacy abilities), and, simultaneously, why it is we see fewer and fewer boy-oriented titles and authors.

The 1970s and 80s saw some incredible transformations in the ways American industries looked at things. In the business sector, marketing analysis elevated to a fairly accurate predictive science, as opposed to the hit-and-miss door-to-door approach of the 50s and 60s. Concurrently, educational data collection and testing also began to make some pretty alarming revelations, particularly regarding the gender gap in achievements between girls and boys (with boys outpacing the girls in every assessable category).

So, a couple things kind of converged to make a perfect storm: In the private sector, resources were being shifted to female-oriented consumerism; and in our schools, resources were being shifted to girl-friendly instructional methods and content in order to address the achievement gap.

We know (and I have written about this a number of times) that educational data shows that girls have made positive strides in achievement in the last 30 years, but boys' scores (particularly in reading and writing) have actually declined. We are damaging boys in schools. Not maintaining their ability status in general, actually harming them.

In other words, since the 1970s in America, boys are a declining industry. Resources (both in the market and in educational institutions) have shifted away from one gender and toward another.

I'd like to believe that Michael's first line -- that if you write it, they will come -- is true. That's exactly why those boys were lining up to be gouged by his Sharpie pen.

We need to get to writing those things the boys are looking for, before our school system completes their transformation into absolute, complete, illiterate failures.

(boy) troubles

Recently, I asked novelist Yvonne Prinz what she thought about this current double-edged sword: losing boys as readers, and the depletion of books targeting them as an audience. Yvonne's fourth book, The Vinyl Princess, will be out in February, 2010 from Harper Collins; and she also maintains a blog called The Vinyl Princess. Here's Yvonne's take on Boys and Reading:

---

Recently in Toronto I was signing autographs for the usual suspects: smart girls holding a copy of my book, most of them sporting cool indie t-shirts, edgy haircuts (I never get the cheerleaders), and wearing cool footwear. I looked up at one point, however, and caught sight of an interloper moving up in the line--a BOY? I couldn’t wait to meet him. When he got to the front of the line I treated him like a celebrity. I was full of questions. This kid was no nerd. He looked like the kind of kid who rewrites playground rules, breaks hearts and knows what detention looks like, yet he was eloquent and he was enthusiastic about my book. He said he had read it, he said he enjoyed it and I was dumbstruck.

When did boys stop reading? And why? I suspect there’s a shortage of YA books targeted at boys these days since I see tables in bookstores heaped with books about being popular, being unpopular, dating a vampire, being a vampire, not eating, eating too much, losing your BFF, losing your virginity, and the ever popular bulimic Vampire who moves to a new school and finds a BFF, but precious little about being a boy (with all due respect, I’m not including graphic novels here. I do consider these to be targeted at boys but they’re not the boy equivalent of the glossy YA novels you see in bookstores, so obviously aimed at girls). I’m not saying that books intended for boys don’t exist, but not since The Catcher In The Rye has a book inspired boys to read the way that girls do. Granted, Frank Portman enjoyed great success with King Dork, a book that actually riffs off of Catcher In The Rye (the publisher even uses it in the cover art). But if I might venture a guess, King Dork probably ended up being read by as many girls as it was boys.

Where is today’s The Catcher In The Rye? Has it been written? Have I overlooked it? Has it been dismissed in favor of video games?

Years ago, when I first waded into the world of YA literature I was inspired by Jack Gantos. The Joey Pigza series, about a freaky kid with a lot of problems, enchanted me and inspired me to read all of Gantos’ work, including his memoir Hole In My Life, a riveting account of the author’s decline into teen alcoholism and eventual imprisonment. I’m quite certain that this book didn’t get the attention it deserved simply because it wasn’t read by enough kids, namely boys.

I’m not a big conference goer but I’ve been to enough SCBWI conferences to know that if you take away the illustrators, you’re pretty much left with a room full of women. This is a curious thing to me. Are men simply not that interested in this genre? I’m not saying that women aren’t capable of writing male characters. S.E. Hinton is a great example. The Outsiders, written all the way back in 1967 is still a favorite of mine. I have noticed, however, that women tend toward writing female characters and female stories and publishers seem to tend toward publishing the same thing. Do I know that a publisher would leap on a well-written boy’s book if one presented itself to them? No, I absolutely do not but I would certainly hope so.

Is it the readers, the writers, or the publishers who have dropped the ball here?

I can’t remember the last time I saw a boy with his nose buried in a YA novel. I realize that boys are not reading this but if you’re near one, make sure and tell him a secret: Girls think boys who read are hot.

(chicken)/(egg)

Ah, June.

I've been meaning to get around to this topic, and figure today's as good as any. About a week ago I had an opportunity to speak at a Freshman English class at College of the Canyons. One of the students asked why I wrote Ghost Medicine. Well, I've kind of answered that question in various roundabout ways on this blog, but, in giving my reply to the class, I told them that they were a perfect example of what I was talking about.

Look around you, I said. The class was about 3:1 female to male. Okay, these are not bad numbers for singles bars or breeding programs, but for higher education, the ratio is a portent -- no, a symptom -- of something not-too-good.

Seems like when I was young, guys did a lot of reading and writing. Actually, educational data will back me up on that. And it seems like there were all kinds of books being written for guys, too... AND lots of male authors, as well.

Things are different now. So, I asked: which came first, the "thinning" of the population of male-oriented books and authors, or the dumbing-down of the male gender?

We had a great discussion about that in the class. I'm going to hold off with some of my ideas for a while, though. I've asked some friends to chime in on the subject, in whatever manner they see fit, and will run their responses here over the next couple of weeks or so.

Tomorrow, we have a terrific guest blog response on the topic from novelist Yvonne Prinz.