Teen Writers Bloc

Let me begin this blog by making one thing very clear: I am NOT complaining.

My life since graduation has been one incredible experience after another, from signing with my agent, to selling my trilogy, to living on a completely different continent, to surviving the rollercoaster ride that was my first revision. I am a very lucky lady.

Now, five months after we graduated, I am halfway through the second revision of my first manuscript, and let me be honest, it’s not as easy as the first. Or perhaps ‘easy’ isn’t the right word. Because the first revision was hard. As in everything-changed-and-I-practically-rewrote-the-damn-thing-and-nearly-lost-my-mind hard.

This revision is smaller, and yet somehow more difficult. I tried to explain it to Jess the other day and this is the best analogy I could come up with. The first revision was like playing dominos — once I changed one thing, everything else sort of fell into place, and while it was a lot of work, I could see the pattern and where it led to. This revision is like trying to solve a jigsaw puzzle where I don’t have the original picture. And the original picture is, say, an Escher painting.

So what I’ve found most challenging is believing in myself, trusting that I will get it right. And I don’t always. This month has been full of self-doubt, and it can be a very lonely place, just you and a manuscript full of red ink, sometimes only focusing on the negatives. There is expectation that wasn’t there before — my editor loved my first revision, what if she doesn’t like this one? What if the new elements I’ve added don’t work? What if the whole thing is a giant disaster?

Let me reiterate: I am NOT complaining. But it is what it is, and I’m sure this won’t be the last time I feel this way about a revision, or a first draft, or an idea. Selling a book does not change your natural insecurities. I keep those insecurities close, because even though they make me feel like crap, they push me to do better, to not be satisfied. And I’m sure when I look back on this revision, I’ll see how and what I learned and I’ll be a better writer because of it. It’s just the ‘doing’ part that’s tough. But this draft will get finished, and polished, and eventually, published. So, like I said before, I am a very lucky lady.

“So, what’s new?”

That’s been the question of the month for me in more ways than one.

Last weekend I had the opportunity to travel across the country for the wedding of one of my oldest friends. I was excited to attend a wedding with my own new husband, to visit Las Vegas for the first time, and to see the bride and groom smiling from ear to ear. I was also excited for the chance to catch up with old friends.

After exchanging a few pleasantries, one of them asked me, “So your book comes out in a few months? How are you feeling?”

I answered briefly but honestly: “Freaked out.”

Here was yet another group of people I hadn’t quite thought about reading all of the steamy and emotional and angry and confusing scenes that I had written in the privacy of my own bedroom. Here was another group of people who might choose to read my book and decide it’s too girly or too mature for teens or, my biggest fear, too political.

And if I’m completely honest, all of this worry about who is going to read my book is effecting my writing hours every day. The truth is that I’m nervous. It’s hard to reconcile that such a private life — one that involves only me and my computer — will be on shelves for the entire world to see. It’s hard to juggle how much time I should spend preparing for my February release date for Book 1 (Me, Him, Them and It), versus putting new words on paper for Book 2. It’s hard to figure out all of the steps I will need to take to turn one book into a lifetime career as an author. It can be overwhelming.

I thought my friend would ask me why I’m freaked out, but he didn’t. Instead, he shrugged and said, “Still, lifelong dream coming true, right?”

And suddenly I realized I was one of those jaded baseball players from the big emotional scene in Rookie of the Year. “Don’t you realize you get to have fun for a living? You get to do what you want to do for your job?” The kid has to yell this at the players to get them to smile, to enjoy themselves.

I had known this friend since elementary school and with that one simple question he reminded me that I’m still the little girl I used to be. The one who filled notebooks with pencil-scribbled half-novels. The one who wrote stories when she was bored in class instead of notes to her friends. The one who knew the answer to “What do you want to be when you grow up?” for as long as she could remember.

“So, what’s new?” Well, not a whole lot. I’m still writing stories. I’m still living entire lives that exist only between my brain and the words that pop out on the page. I’m still the same girl I was when I met the bride in fourth grade.

But it can be difficult to transition your dream into your job. And, sometimes, you need a kid (or someone who still knows you primarily as a kid) to put you in your place.

Photo credit: vegasmaxicourse, ew.com

I recently caught up with Tracey L. Pacelli — friend of Teen Writers Bloc and author of the new paranormal YA novel Time Warped.

Tell us a bit about yourself and how you became a writer? What did you do before you “officially” became a writer?

In 5th grade we were given an assignment to write a sci-fi short story. My teacher  chose mine to read in front of the class, declaring it the most inventive. I never forgot the thrill it gave me to be singled out that way. Afterward, my best friend said I was talented and that was basically it for me. I knew I was a writer and would someday follow that path.

Before writing, I chased those “glamour” positions that pay very little, working administrative type jobs at CBS, HBO and the NBA, all in New York. It was fun, especially HBO, but I could barely pay for the Upper West Side closet my landlord creatively called an apartment, so I jumped ship and headed to a financial office in a little place called The World Trade Center, building #7. Beautiful area, but I didn’t mesh very well with the Trump wannabes. So, I fired myself and headed for Charleston, SC, with my new hubby. In Charleston, I worked for a scary police chief in the paralegal dep’t and about a year later I was a ballroom dance instructor at The Fred Astaire Dance Studio. The ballroom had no bathroom, and the students had to go across the street. After only one month of lessons, I was expected to teach! I wasn’t ready, so I headed for that bathroom across the street and never came back.

What made you want to be a writer? Do you write full-time now?

Gene Roddenberry and Star Trek made me want to write. Since I couldn’t actually share in the crew’s adventures, I had no choice but to imagine myself on the Enterprise as a red-headed, Venusian navigator in love with Captain Kirk, and penned many exciting episodes for myself over the years.

Can you give us a quick synopsis of Time Warped? How did you come up with the concept for the book?

Time Warped is about a troubled teen, Lanie Landry, who wakes up one day to find herself in an insane asylum, back in 1969. There she meets her biological mom for the first time and falls for a mysterious inmate.

I’d just seen Shutter Island and knew immediately I was drawn to the setting of an insane asylum. Call me crazy–and many do–but I thought, how about we put a teen in one who didn’t actually belong there, and I’ll add some Twilight Zone twist to the story. I’ve always been fascinated with time being a man-made construction and I like to fool with the idea of taking that construction apart, till it no longer makes sense. In other words, I think time travel is really cool.

What’s your writing process? What does a typical writing day look like? Where does your inspiration come from?

It used to be I’d spend the larger portion of my day writing and leave the marketing, cleaning, preparing meals and listening to my daughter and husband’s rants, for my evening chores. Now, everything’s basically gone to Hades, including my family’s basic needs, and I find myself knee-deep in the gorilla marketing trenches, unable to climb out. Of course, the novel only just launched and there’s a need for me to push it out into the world, much like a newborn. But it’s a labor of love, and I actually am enjoying finding ways to hammer my book over the heads of unsuspecting readers. Hmmm…wonder if Vistaprint sells hammers with book image?  Must look into that.

As for inspiration, pop culture usually feeds it nicely. Whatever I’m watching on TV, at the movies, or reading in my daughter’s teen mags (don’t tell her I borrow them), becomes fodder for the muse I keep locked up in my basement.

There are a lot of pop culture references in Time Warped, which I found really helped develop the character of Lanie and grounded us in a real place and time. Did you do this intentionally or was that a happy accident?

Funny, I just answered your question. Must be psychic. I really do love pop culture, which is probably why The Gilmore Girls is my second all-time favorite show, right after Star Trek. Lorelei is a master of pop culture and I can only bow to her greatness. Rosie is another pop-culture goddess. I hope one day I may be in their league and maybe go bowling with them sometime.

What has your path to publication been like? What’s been the most surprising part of the writing/publishing process for you?

I wrote it and they came! But, first I had to walk thousands of miles barefoot over sharp rocks, swim through a feces infested moat, use my body as a battering ram to knock down the castle door, and sleep atop a thousand mattresses with this annoying pea underneath. Only then was I given the keys to the castle. Translation: As a writer I cried waterfalls of tears over the years, facing overwhelming rejection to finally land this amazing deal at Gypsy Shadow Publishing. And, I’d do it all again.

What was surprising part? To Quote Sally, “They liked me…they really liked me!”

What’s the best writing advice you’ve ever gotten? What advice would you yourself give aspiring authors?

Every rejection moves you one step closer to success!

What was your favorite book when you were a kid/teenager? What is your favorite children’s or young adult book today? What are you reading now?

Pride and Prejudice and Pride and Prejudice. I know, every girl loves that book, so why should I be any different? I’ve always loved to laugh at ridiculous people. Jane Austen had such a gift for exposing them. Though I used to think I wouldn’t be caught dead in a room with Mr. Collins, I actually now have a couple of friends who are very much like him and I thoroughly enjoy their company!

Presently, I’m reading The Perks of Being a Wallflower by Stephen Chbosky.

Do you believe in being part of a “bloc” of writers? Are critique groups and writing communities helpful to you?

I actually belong to The Royal Book Club in downtown Asheville for parents who like to read young adult books. Sounds crazy, right? But we’ve already established I’m a bit off my rocker. At the meetings, we dissect the writing to such detail, it becomes a great learning tool for me as a teen author.

What’s up next for you?

I’ve completed the first draft of a new teen trilogy I’m quite excited about called Already Gone. It takes place just a wee bit into the future and then travels back and forth to Atlantis during its final days before the apocalypse.

There’s also my littleredwriter paranormal blog, where I try to mix in a little humor with weekly paranormal news at www.traceypacelli.com.

Thanks so much for this interview. I’m a great fan of TWB and wish all the writers much success!

Thanks so much, Tracey! Time Warped is available now in print and e-book format!

I’m on the road to (hopeful) publication. Step One: The Query Letter.

Fact: QueryTracker is an evil enterprise designed to make writers go insane.

Fact: The New York City dating scene is, miraculously, less stressful than the agent search.

Fact: My time in the New York City dating scene included a guy who talked about himself in the third person (G-Man. I’m not kidding) and a guy whose big business plan was to sell tampons on the internet. Just giving you a basic sense of the levels of stress we are talking about here.

Fact: I am currently totally qualified to be working on my novel about obsessive-compulsive disorder because I have developed a OCD habit of checking email over the last month of querying.

For those who don’t know about the process of getting published, it basically starts with a query letter. This query letter has to pithily describe your book in a way that is both original and accessible, descriptive and contained, literary and commercial. Also, it requires bragging about yourself modestly and not sounding insane.

It’s a tall order.

Lucky for me, I have classmates who are actually good at this kind of skill. In the words of my boyfriend, I “go on” sometimes. I’m pretty sure this is a nice/vague way of saying that in my attempt to describe my work I end up writing something longer than the actual novel. I also lack certain skills, like writing business-y letters or basically doing anything that isn’t either writing creatively or serving cocktails to weird tourists or picking out really good restaurants.

But with people like Alyson and Sona on my team I am UNSTOPPABLE. These girls took my 27 page query letter* (*dramatic interpretation of reality) and made it a nice little three paragraph superstar query letter.

Once the query letter was polished into perfection, I added on a few fun quirky details (being careful not to “go on” too much) and picked out the agents who would be lucky enough to consider it. Once agents receive your query letter, they decide whether or not they actually want to check out the book. Sadly, they can (and very often do!) reject the manuscript based on the query letter alone.

This is where the obsessing begins.

Because there is a website called QueryTracker, on which you can see who else is submitting queries, how long it takes agents to get in touch with them, how often agents request Full Manuscripts after seeing an initial query letter, and who is actually getting an agent. Then, if you are prone to craziness, you do complex Beautiful Mind-like calculations to see how likely it is that you will become famous soon.

Note: I never finished high school math.

Note: This is a completely true fact. I squirmed my way out of any math after sophomore year. It has not yet affected my life negatively in any way. Aside from an unfortunate idea to attempt taking the Math SAT 2, which, funny enough, requires you actually have finished your basic math requirements.

The point is: I do not actually have the skills to do any mathematical equations but I’m so nervous and impatient that I, for the first time ever, wish I had learned things like probability and percentages and algebra back in the day.

Long story short: Agents are looking at my novel. It has been exactly one month since I began querying. I am a super-fun combination of excited and terrified. I am a joy to be around.

More on this process later. I must go watch The Biggest Loser, which is the only thing able to distract me from my thoughts of agents and query letters.

Used with permission from Debbie Ridpath Ohi at Inkygirl.com.

When we met debut author Gwendolyn Heasley at one of David Levithan’s monthly teen author readings, we totally inspired by her story: having graduated at the height of the recession, the jobless and living with her parents wannabe journalist turned her broke-in-the-city angst into a fun fish-out-0f-water tale, Where I Belong. Gwendolyn paused from penning the book’s companion story to chat with Teen Writers Bloc about the arduous publishing process, nabbing her dream job and characters that talk to her — in a good way!

Tell us a bit about yourself and how you became a writer?

I was in school for about 21 consecutive years. After I finished my Master’s in Journalism at the University of Missouri, I moved to New York City with the hopes of a magazine job. I didn’t have any visions of grandeur; I realized I’d be fetching coffee for people with fabulous and glamorous jobs rather than landing a fabulous, glamorous job myself. But I did think I would get a job!

But I also moved to New York City the same month the stock market crashed (October 2008) and all of sudden everything was about the recession. Journalism budgets were slashed and tons of entry-level positions were cut. All of sudden, getting any job seemed extremely difficult. So instead of the single girl in the city with the studio apartment, I was living with my parents and frantically searching for jobs!

As a young girl, I had wanted to be a fiction writer not a journalist. But as I got older, working for a magazine (and having health insurance and a steady paycheck) just seemed more logical.

In order to keep my brain working while doing an unpaid internship and searching for jobs, I signed up for a YA fiction-writing course with Mediabistro — and put my recession tales into narrative!  With a lot of luck and good timing, my manuscript was sold to HarperCollins. My dream (although long forgotten) became a reality!

I love being a writer because you get to make everything up. In journalism, there wasn’t that creative license (for very good reason), but I love the freedom that fiction allows. I do not write full-time, although I am realizing how it is very hard to balance multiple jobs. Depending on the semester, I teach between one and three college writing classes, which I love doing. I teach both freshmen and adult learners, and I have learned a lot about life and writing from them.

Can you give us a quick synopsis of Where I Belong? How did you come up with the concept for the book?

Where I Belong is about a teenage Manhattanite Corinne who is about to head off to boarding school with her horse and her best friend. But then the recession hits and her family loses their money, so she heads to Texas instead to live with her parents and attend public school. It’s a riches to rags story that hopefully makes you laugh and cry.

The inspiration was the recession. I wrote it during the very height of the recession when I couldn’t find a job.  I didn’t want it to be completely depressing, so I created a humorous, spoiled character who only thinks her life is over because of the recession. In some ways, the recession isn’t her enemy; she’s her own enemy. I think the recession forced me (and many others) to reevaluate my life and I know I found lessons in the recession just like my character Corrinne does too.

Can you also talk a bit about the real currency of the book — these hard economic times and how you turned your own experience into Corrinne’s? Can teens relate?

I think teens (whether they are affected by the recession or not) can relate because it is a book about change and how difficult change can be.  I do think many teens today have learned tough lessons about money because of the recession, and I think they are rightfully called “the silent victims of the recession.” Money issues are very stressful for families (no matter the family’s socioeconomic status, and I think the novel taps on that.

My next novel is about Kitsy (the Texan friend) coming to New York and entering a world that’s a lot bigger (and richer) than Broken Spoke, Texas. The novel is going to be about how you find your confidence and place, no matter where you are. I love Kitsy, so I am excited to write a first-person novel about her!

What’s your writing process? What does a typical writing day look like?

I write from home sometimes. ( I don’t live with the parents anymore.) I invested in a desktop, which makes writing easier.  But I also get cabin fever, so I have spent a lot of time at the PATH café in the West Village.

I like to write when it is light out because darkness makes me sleepy and lazy. (Of course, deadlines don’t make this always possible.) It might sound weird, but my characters truly tell me the stories and I listen. I am not saying this in a voices-in-my-head way. What I mean is that I think a lot before I write, which I think helps tremendously.

What has your path to publication been like? What’s been the most surprising part of the writing/publishing process for you?

I had a lucky and quick path to publication due to the timely nature of my book. The extensive editing process amazed me! You do some much work in editing, and your editor contributes so much to your novel as well. Editors deserve more credit.

What’s the best writing advice you’ve ever gotten? What advice would you yourself give aspiring authors?

The best writing advice I’ve gotten is to write for yourself. If you love it — even if no one else does — that should be enough.

My advice to other authors is patience. You don’t know when you are born or when you will die or get married or any of those other milestones. So you also don’t know when you will be published, but I believe that it can happen any time and it will if you keep trying.

What was your favorite book when you were a kid/teenager? What are you reading now?

The Baby- sitters Club. Hands down. I love those girls! I am reading Delirium right now, and I just finished a Sara Zarr reading marathon.

What’s next for you writing-wise (and otherwise!)?

I am working on a companion book to Where I Belong. After that, I want to keep writing YA!

Do you believe in being part of a “bloc” of writers? Are critique groups and writing communities helpful to you?

My mediabistro class was very helpful to me. I think feedback is great! I am not part of a critique group right now, but I might join one soon!

Thanks Gwendolyn! Your story is super-inspiring!

Images courtesy Elizabeth Cryan/HarperCollins

This past year has been an especially productive one in terms of creative output, risk-taking, and pushing myself to write every day. I have been mostly successful — a huge amount of writing happened, and finished products are pending. I am days away from a completed first draft of my first YA novel, and am in the third revision of a very special debut novel that has been a challenge and a thrill.

Most days I wrote a minimum of 1,000 words.
I didn’t shy away from really big revisions.
I wrote about a community I actually had to research.
I made enormous, chapters-long cuts to help the books move.
I started a first attempt at a middle grade novel.

Now it’s time, in 2011, to address the other side of writing: The Business Side. With a lot of material under my belt, I need to start figuring out what to do with it. BUT also keep pushing through on my newer work! Here’s my to-do list:

-write a great query letter for my YA novel as well as my adult novel

-sign with an agent

-remember to research publishing imprints and be vigilant about doing further research on my favorite books and authors

-finish my middle grade novel (or you know, get a chunk more than ten pages long under my belt)

-keep reading middle grade work to get more familiar with the genre

-make time for my freelance/paid writing work, even if I don’t feel like it. A girl’s gotta eat!

Wish me luck!

After reading an article about mixed race or biracial characters in children’s and teen fiction, it made me reconsider or rethink my own project. I am writing a middle grade historical steampunk novel with a biracial main protagonist. Questions swirled in my head: Why did I choose a biracial identity for the main character? What did I gain by doing that? Or what could my future gains be?

The author of the article was reviewing two picture books that profile biracial children, Mixed: Portraits of Multiracial Kids and Spork. Kip Fulbeck’s Mixed book reminds me of a coffee table book full of pictures of happy biracial children. The second book, Kyo Maclear’s Spork, shows the offspring of a fork and a spoon and symbolizes an interracial union. These picture books made me think about multiracial or biracial teens and tweens in teen and middle grade fiction. Would my protagonist be lonesome? Or a perfect intersection of cultures to boost sales? Not too brown to impede sales?

There has been little press devoted to the fact that the main characters in Rick Riordian’s The Red Pyramid (The Kane Chronicles) are, in fact, biracial. Sadie and Carter are the children of a dead white woman and a black Egyptologist father. Sadie looks white and has been living with her mother’s parents in London, only getting the opportunity to see her father and brother a couple times a year. Carter looks more like his father and lives with him, traveling all over the world. Their racial identity doesn’t inform the text or become a thematic element, but there is a scene where Carter’s father has a serious conversation with him about being African-American. Here is a snippet:

“Carter, you’re getting older. You’re an African American man. People will judge you more harshly, and so you must always look impeccable.”

“That’s not fair!” I insisted.

“Fairness does not mean everyone gets the same,” Dad said. “Fairness means everyone gets what they need. And the only way to get what you need is to make it happen yourself. “  (67)

Last month, at an event at New York City’s Books of Wonder featuring the National Book Award Nominees Walter Dean Myers, Rita Williams-Gracia, Katherine Erskine, and Paolo Bacigalupi, I polled the illustrious panel of authors with the following question: Do books with brown faces on them sell?

Rita Williams-Garcia and Walter Dean Myers both answered that it has been hard, but you must persevere and write the book in your heart. The owner of Books of Wonder, Peter Glassman, said that he has often found that white parents don’t buy books with brown faces on them for their kids — and that it is an unfortunate fact. Rita reminded the audience of the publishing hoopla caused by the cover of Justine Labarastier’s book Liar, and how the first cover featured a blonde-haired, blue-eyed girl when the main protagonist was in fact a black female.

Paolo Bacigalupi commented that the main protagonist in his futuristic novel Shipbreaker is mixed race and based on his own child’s ethnicity. He said that his publishers didn’t put his face on the cover and that could say something, but that it is a fact often overlooked when the novel is reviewed. When reviewers neglect to mention the ethnic and/or racial identity of main characters in successful books, does it add to the feeling that biracial characters are invisible in the teen market? Are they doing the book a disservice, even if it isn’t central to the plot?

My historical steampunk novel would be complicated by the race relations of the late 1800s if I made my character full-blood African-American, so I chose to give myself some freedom by making her only half. Additionally, I think that it enhances the tension in the novel to have her be able to pass for white, but also be confronted with the racism her mother faces. The novel is not about race and it’s not a sub-plot or part of the thematic content of the novel. But it is mentioned to add another layer of isolation and tension to the main character’s journey and how she came about. I do worry about whether this decision will effect the book’s marketability and whether my main character’s biraciality will be swept under the rug in reviews and marketing. And sadly, I can’t help but wonder, is that for the best? Peter Glassman’s words haunt my subconscious.

Even though this book hasn’t been sold yet, I find myself already thinking about its racial implications. What is gained by making a character biracial? What is lost? Will my heroine still be considered a multicultural heroine? Will she speak to the child I was? Will all middle-grade girls find a connection with her?

Does anyone know of other middle grade and teen texts with biracial main characters where the novel is not about race? I’d love hear about them.

Last Monday I got the opportunity to tag along with my good friend and published author J.A. Yang, writer of Exclusively Chloe, to Books of Wonder‘s private holiday party.

I can’t say enough fabulous things about this Chelsea bookstore. I often visit it when I hate writing my current project or am re-thinking my chosen career path as a writer. I wander the aisles, running my fingers over the colorful hardcover titles. I read all of the back-flap summaries of the entire middle grade row and eventually make my way to the back of the store to gawk into the rare children’s books case. Being surrounded by only children’s and teen books fills me with a magical feeling, like I’ve lifted off in a hot air balloon to an unknown destination.

Jon and I met at the party around 6:30 pm. I timidly followed him inside, unsure of what to expect. I am usually a social butterfly, diving in head first, ready to chat. But walking into this party was different. It buzzed with dozens of authors sipping wine, nibbling on snack foods, and talking about the current market. I nervously stared and wandered around bookshelves in awe. I spent most of the night awkwardly gazing at peoples’ bellies to get a look at their name tags. Then my mind frantically tried to connect authors’ names with their books. I secretly googled people on my iPhone to pin down their titles. These people were my celebrities. They were living the dream. The life I covet: a published, working author in the casual, cozy company of other authors.

I stuffed carrots in my mouth and watched them drift by. Here were some of my sightings: Deborah Heiligman, whom I’d heard speak at Rutgers and was still in awe of from her inspiring kick-in-the-butt speech. Sheldon Fogelman of The Sheldon Fogelman Agency, whose clients are some of the top children’s book writers and illustrators, Jerry Pinkney, Mo Willems, Richard Peck, and Maurice Sendak, and not to forget my former Hollins University writing professor, Alexandria La Faye. Barry Lyga, author of one of my favorite books, The Astonishing Adventures of Fan Boy and Goth Girl. Judy Blundell, National Book Award winner and an author who had just come to my Teen Lit class with David Levithan as part of his author panel. She remembered signing my book! Dave Horowitz, a prolific picture book author and artist that my four-year-old niece adores. He has titles such as Duck, Duck Moose and Five Little Gefiltes. Courtney Sheinmel, who was the Rutgers One-On-Obe mentor of our fabulous logo designer Lisa Amowitz and the author of a powerful books titled Positively, about an HIV-positive teen. And that’s just to name a few!

There were countless others, but I couldn’t get to them all before having to rush off to Monday workshop. Needless to say, attending these types of events boosts my morale and makes the dream of being a writer seem a tangible reality that is coming closer and closer. Maybe one day soon I’ll get to attend the Books of Wonder party again, but as a published author.

It’s interesting that in the fallout of the expose on James Frey’s fiction factory in New York Magazine last month, New York City MFA students are the ones who come off looking like fools.

That is, at least according to MFA guru Seth Abramson, author of The Creative Writing MFA Handbook, who wrote all about why we’re apparently idiots for the Huffington Post last week.

“In seeking out young authors to exploit, Frey has done as much as anyone in the United States to reveal the seedy side of unfunded MFA programs,” Abramson writes. “Indeed, research done into MFA programs since 2006 reveals that Columbia University and The New School, Frey’s top targets for young, desperate literary artists, are distinctive in only two respects: (1) they host the two largest MFA cohorts in fiction in the United States; and (2) their fiction alumni are believed to have the highest graduate student loan burden of any MFA graduates anywhere.”

The case he’s making is that students at the New School and Columbia (and no doubt NYU, too, by default) are so desperate to earn their way out of their MFA debt that they’ll sign any old contract, panting breathlessly at the very thought of actually being published. Because apparently we’re that hopeless.

In reality, I think the students that did sign on for Frey’s dastardly deal are simply hedging their bets. Some percentage of a million dollar deal is a hard thing to turn down. Especially when advances these days are often pitifully low. But that’s a whole other conversation.

Really, I’d rather address Abramson’s allegation that New York City-area MFA students are idiots. As a graduate student in the MFA program in creative writing at the New School: A) I’m not going into crippling debt to pursue this. Yes, it’s an expensive endeavor, but I (and many of my classmates) do have some funding. We’re in New York City, the heart of the publishing industry and the known world. Of course it’s expensive, but so are many programs in other parts of the nation. B) I don’t have the the luxury of packing up my life and my family and moving to Iowa or Nebraska to pursue a funded degree. I work. I have a family. I have family in the area. I want to be in New York City. C) I truly believe you get what you pay for. And to me, this degree and the creative community that comes with it are worth it.

But also, having spent a semester in the program thus far, I also see that my classmates are far from being idiots for taking on this purportedly life-altering debt for a degree, as Abramson put it in another HuffPost blog, that is “at base, a non-professional, largely-unmarketable art-school degree that can’t get anyone a full-time teaching job (at least not in the absence of significant in-genre publications) and is not designed to ‘network’ graduates into magazine or book publications.”

In fact, I’d argue that the Writing for Children program at the New School is designed to be pretty much exactly the opposite of what Abramson presents. The class of 2012 consists of 12 students, a small cohort that’s designed to create a close-knit writers’ community. (Hence this blog.) It’s one of fewer than a dozen programs in the nation with a writing for children concentration, so the odds are, it’s building up the next strong group of instructors in this very specialized field (and with YA markets booming, the need for instructors with expertise in this arena is no doubt growing). Its focus is on creativity and the canon, so we know all about where we’re going — and where we’re coming from. It’s a diverse, intelligent, creative group of writers who no doubt represent the future of publishing in this arena.

And even more significantly, the networking element is crucial and a key component of the way this program is built. Case in point: David Levithan. A force to be reckoned with in the children’s publishing industry, and a best-selling writer himself, Levithan hasn’t simply put his name on the program. He’s an integral part of it. For one thing, he teaches every year, unlike some of the brand name authors that serve as MFA ambassadors throughout the nation, pulling students into their fold only to depart on book tours or sabbaticals, rather than teach. And it’s an education only he could provide, given his multiple roles in the field and his careful, articulate examination of it. He also advises students, and even publishes some of them.

Secondly, David and the other instructors in the program — all of whom are working writers and/or editors — play up the networking aspect. Just this past week, David brought in a cadre of eight working writers to class to “talk shop,” as it were. Among these were best-selling YA goddess and Printz winner Libba Bray and National Book Award winner Judy Blundell. We got to ask them questions about their process, craft, publishing, the highs and lows of life as a writer.

Thirdly, given our locale in downtown Manhattan, we’re at the heart and the pulse of publishing every day. Another major part of our program — for all genres — is the writers’ colloquium, which mandates that we attend a minimum of eight author events and readings throughout the semester, either sponsored by the school (which offers a great line-up each year) or within the city. Of course, most students attend far more than eight, considering that New York boasts such readings and events on a daily basis with major names in publishing. One of the first such events I attended as a student was Salman Rushdie introducing new writer Tishani Doshi at the Brooklyn Book Festival, which was absolutely free. Another great one was one of David’s NYC Teen Author readings, featuring David and his Dash and Lily’s Book of Dares co-writer Rachel Cohn and YA icon Scott Westerfeld, amongst other teen lit all-stars.

And last, but certainly not least, are the alumni, who continue to support the program that brought them right into the heart of publishing. Next week, author and New School alum Coe Booth will be teaching our class — and teaching her books, Tyrell and Kendra (both published by David Levithan at his Scholastic imprint Push). She graduated from the New School in 2005, along with fellow published writers Jenny Han, Lisa Graff, Lisa Greenwald, Siobhan Vivian, Daphne Grab, Kathryne Alfred, and Caroline Hickey. (That’s right, the Longstockings.)Given the short history of the writing for children program, an astonishing number of its graduates are published and publishing. Not bad for a throwaway degree, huh?