Mean Girls Are People, Too!

I recently showed my nine-year-old son a group photo from my *mumble* year high school reunion. His first question? "Who were the mean girls?" He's only in 4th grade and he already knows. And I know how he knows. I've worked in his classroom; I've seen junior mean girls in action. The warfare is already strictly psychological. Some examples, all said with pointed looks toward shorter/less attractive/chubbier victims: "Eww, what's that smell?" "Why are your pants so short?" "How fast did you run the mile?"

The thing is, in a group shot of over a hundred people, I could pick the mean girls out quickly, efficiently, definitively. How could I do this after so many years? Because those junior mean girls, for the most part, grew up to be thirty-something mean girls. Some, either battered by life or surprised by its goodness, evolved into decent people. Most, though, flashed their large diamonds in the faces of women who obviously struggled financially, elbowed their way to the front of every photo op, spread nasty stories about women who weren't there, and couldn't defend themselves.

Mean girls are tough to write about. They shouldn't be. Every high school has them, as do most YA books about those years. When someone is mean to us, we remember the transgression in minute detail. This should make it easy to pull sensory images from real life when writing, but maybe this is the problem. Those instances become almost mythical for writers and can turn into caricature when we are loosely recreating them on paper.

I have a mean girl, Nina, in my novel. In my (super-smart) agent's revision notes, she wrote, why doesn't Nina get any closure? My first reaction was, because Nina doesn't deserve any! But then, I thought about it, and decided I was being a mean writer. And a short-sighted one. Do I still hate the mean girls, even though I now figure they all have inferiority complexes or unhappy marriages or personality disorders? Yes. Does it mean, from a writer's perspective, they aren't deserving of being treated as whole, multi-dimensional characters? No.

What do you guys think?

John Hughes, RIP

"If somebody doesn't believe in me, I can't believe in them." Andie, Pretty in Pink



John Hughes really got people like me. Kids who lived slightly in the margins, left of center, on the flat side of the popularity Bell Curve (Andie, Allison, Keith, etc.). Kids who loved fully and completely without a chance of being loved back (Duckie, Farmer Ted). Angry, abused kids who cobbled together a protective armour from bits and pieces of attitude (John Bender, Andrew, Watts). Kids just trying to be, in an unforgiving world.

Serious stuff, but he did all this with a rockin', killer sense of humor. I left theaters wanting to live in a John Hughes movie. Little did I realize, I did. His films struck such a chord with my peers because they were so reflective of our lives--the confusion, competition, insecurity, chaos, and--fun. Absolute fun. John Hughes really understood what it meant to be sixteen. He believed in us, and we in him.


He will be missed.

What's In A Name?

When I was a freshman in high school, my friend Chris invited me for a sleepover party. This was mucho exciting because 1. Chris had 11 brothers and sisters, which meant parental supervision was spotty, and 2. Two of the 11 siblings were only a few years older than us, male, and HOT. Sleepover at Chris's house? Oh, yeah.



So I arrived for fun and games. But when Chris introduced me to the hottie bros, they mumbled "Get back, Loretta" and giggled to themselves. I had no freaking clue what they were talking about. Every time I saw them that weekend--passing through the hallway, eating in the kitchen, sitting on the front stoop--they'd repeat it, "Get back, Loretta", until I thought for sure I'd done something wrong, or they just didn't want a geek like me hanging around their house and were trying to get me to go home. Finally, I asked Chris.


"You know what they're talking about, don't you?"


I told her I didn't.


"It's the Beatles," she explained. "Get Back is a song, you idiot."


My parents were not music people. My mom had some Elvis albums from when she was a kid, and my dad played Tchaikovsky and Rachmaninoff occasionally, but that was pretty much it. I wasn't much better. There was a brief, unfulfilled flirtation with Michael Jackson in junior high. A fascination with Madonna. A longing to slip my hands in the back pockets of Springsteen's jeans after viewing the album cover for Born in the USA. I thought Duran Duran was as close to pop perfection as I would see in my lifetime. But the Beatles? I knew who Paul McCartney was (He did Say, Say, Say with MJ, right?) and I thought he was cute. I also had a vague recollection of John Lennon's death, and memories of watching Yellow Submarine on TV in the 70s. That was it.

Something told me I needed to find out more, though, so I went a-searching at Wax Trax Records in Evanston, and came home with a bunch of albums (yes--vinyl): Rubber Soul, Revolver, Sgt. Pepper.

You know that scene in the Wizard of Oz, when Dorothy wakes up and everything is in Technicolor? That was precisely my experience when I first heard what John, Paul, George and Ringo had done, more than 20 years before I placed those albums on my dad's turntable. Those four boys handed me a new life, one of creativity, imagination, freedom.

Good art can do that. The door opens, you pass through, and when you get to the other side you are still you, only better, enhanced.

I can only hope my writing can do this for someone someday.

I write books for young adults because high school is the time when there are so many doors, so many chances to grow, to choose, to start building who you want to be. It's an exciting time. Much has happened in my life since then, but those experiences are so fresh in my memory, and age has given me the opportunity to see how they continue to shape the woman I've become.


So, without any more ancient stories from the 80s, I hereby inaugurate this blog, in which I will discuss writing, life, music, joy, and what-not. Mostly what-not.