Uncreated Conscience

Lawdy, it’s been a while since I’ve blogged isn’t it? Many things have been going on, but I haven’t had the time to sit down and give y’all a thorough update on what’s going on in my life, both professionally and personally. Everything’s all good!

Anyway, one of the pieces of news I forgot to mention is that I’ve now joined the ladies of Pub(lishing) Crawl as a contributor, so expect to see posts about the industry from me once a month there!

Today I blogged about the acquisitions process (complete with all the GIFs I stole from Tumblr), so head on over there to check it out!

Lately I’ve been mulling over a question that seems to crop up in a lot of what I read for both work and pleasure, namely whether or not a definition of YA exists. Of course YA exists, but what it is seems to be a fluid idea, shaped by many different considerations: age of protagonist, marketing concerns, and the most controversial of all–reading level.

This morning on Twitter I posed the question of whether YA was a genre, a reading level, or a marketing category and the responses I got were great. People had varying opinions, of course, but what struck me was that in this roiling, frothing discussion, general a consensus was rising to the top:

YA is not a reading level; it is a specific perspective and aesthetic sensibility.

(more…)

• COLLEAGUE: Oh my god.
• JJ: What? Did you find another crazy copyedit note?
• COLLEAGUE: No, someone sent me a video of alpacas.

Well. Hello! Oh excuse me while I dust off the layers of dust that have settled over this blog. Dear me, how long has it been since I’ve written anything substantive? Wait, don’t answer that; it’s really embarrassing.

Anyway, I promise I haven’t dropped off the face of the planet, although I’ve been submerged in a flood of work, both at the office and outside of it. I have had plenty of things I’ve wanted to discuss with you, but life has looked a lot like this ever since BEA:

For those who haven't seen it--GO WATCH SHAUN OF THE DEAD RIGHT NOW.

Whoever said summer was a slow time in publishing was a LIAR. A nasty, filthy, disgusting liar. And while I still have a myriad of things to do, I’m going to take some time out of my busy schedule to answer a question I have gotten a million times over (and inspired by this post by agent Jennifer Laughran):

How did you get into publishing?

When I probe a little further, the majority of these questions seem to be about how I got into editorial, which is what most people seem to think of when they think of The Industry. (Within the confines of my blog and my insular little world, The Industry is publishing, not Hollywood.) There are many components to working in publishing: from marketing to publicity to sales to production, but what people are the most curious about is how I got on the editorial path.

I will be candid: luck. Luck and nepotism. (Well, sort of nepotism. Just about, anyway.)

(more…)

There persists a myth in our collective social conscience: that to name something or to know someone’s true name was to have power over him or her. I thought that if I could just find my sexuality’s true name, I could finally stop refining and defining that part of myself.

I really need to stop agreeing to guest blogs and articles. Because I forget I have to write them. So I end up writing them at the 11th hour, panicking in the middle of a Game of Thrones episode, and then dashing off 1200 words with nary a proofread. Oops. I’m sorry! But I am also proud of this one, which is about labels and touches on the problematic way society views bisexuality.

There must be something in the air (or perhaps the books we read and the media we consume) that is making many writers blog about the subject of sex in fiction (and specifically YA). Kody Keplinger (who wrote the wonderfully sex-positive THE DUFF) blogged about it (twice!) at YA Highway, Marie Lu asked why sex is considered “more shameful” than violence, and Karen Healey writes the most awesome kickass post about obligation, both teenage and adult.

We have a strange relationship with sex, and by “we”, I can only really talk about Americans because that is what I know and how I was raised. I think Coach Carr in Mean Girls sums up our weird attitude perfectly.

At your age, you’re going to have a lot of urges. You’re going to want to take off your clothes, and touch each other. But if you do touch each other, you WILL get chlamydia… and die! [...] Don’t have sex, because you will get pregnant and die! Don’t have sex in the missionary position, don’t have sex standing up, just don’t do it, OK, promise?

Sex is wrong! Sex will lead to consequences! But, uh, we feel uncomfortable talking about it, so be safe. Or better yet, let’s avoid it altogether! And if you can’t avoid it, then let’s avoid speaking of it at all!

(more…)