I just received a thoughtful email from Owen at Nonna Terra. He was reflecting on the year that was and looking ahead to 2023. It’s that time, I guess…the holidays are fast approaching, which means those dreaded book lists are appearing online. I’m happy that MOONWALKING made it onto the NYPL’s 2022 Best Books for Kids, but know that so many excellent titles get overlooked every year. THE WITCH’S APPRENTICE made it onto The Globe & Mail’s holiday gift guide, and there was interest in that title at NCTE last week. I wasn’t sure anyone would come to my morning signing; the exhibit hall was huge and felt a little empty at 10:30am, but folks joined the line and all the books were signed and given away. The next day Lyn and I signed 80 books in 40 minutes…and our afternoon panel was great. It was good to see friends in person but I definitely felt less enthusiastic than I have in the past. NCTE has always been one of my favorite conferences to attend because who doesn’t love English teachers?! And you get to mingle and interact in meaningful ways. The crowd was smaller this year, I think, but then it isn’t cheap to spend half a week in Anaheim right before Thanksgiving. I’m lucky that Macmillan paid for my expenses, and I got to spend a couple of days in the Bay Area with friends before shifting into conference mode. Came back to chilly Chicago last Saturday night with no internet at home and no service on my phone…getting that resolved took more time and energy than it should have but it made me sit with myself for a while. I don’t generally feel addicted to social media and am not at all worried about Twitter’s demise since I rarely use the platform. But I’m thinking more these days about *why* I spend so much time alone. I’m an introvert, I need solitude to write…I have all sorts of legit-sounding reasons. But Owen’s email and Chani’s weekly horoscope asked me to consider my “growth edges.” There are quite a few areas in my life that need work but I was surprised to find myself talking so much about family last week. One friend asked if I still have dreams and aspirations—she’s one of the most creative people I know but is having a dry spell, and I immediately linked her question to the stressful year she’s had. I tell kids all the time that writing, for me, is 70% dreaming and I fiercely protect that dream time. I practice avoidance more than I should…and the biggest source of stress in my life has always been family. So I avoid the family I was born into and haven’t built a family of my own. I look at my friends who are struggling and their concern is primarily for others—their kids, spouse, and/or parent. They put their loved ones’ needs first and that doesn’t leave a lot of time or energy to focus on their own needs or goals. During Friday’s panel at NCTE, one author shared that she wrote a seven-book series about a happy family that loves doing things together and rarely faces adversity—that wasn’t her reality as a child but she wanted that reality to at least exist in her books. Others on the panel talked about having difficult childhoods and facing racism without the tools they needed to defend themselves. All those experiences find a way into their work, but we didn’t talk about the challenge of finding time to write and breaking into a business that’s often hostile to people of color and Indigenous writers. Virginia Woolf wrote about women artists needing a room of their own; of course, she had wealth and servants to deal with a lot of her material needs. In some ways, the poor might dream more vividly than the wealthy—or perhaps they dream out of desperation. “Necessity is the mother of invention” and “great suffering produces great art”…this is an ongoing conversation about resources and trauma and what it takes to be an artist in this world. If your material needs are met, you don’t have to waste energy worrying about how the rent will be paid and where your next meal’s coming from; but you might also lose some of the drive that propelled you to be creative. I lost internet access for one day and saw how many folks relied on free wifi in cafes and the public library; it shouldn’t be, but it’s a luxury in this country to have reliable internet access in your home. I wanted this writer’s life and I worked hard to achieve it, but so many privileges make my current lifestyle possible (and easy). A friend recently lost her job and I’d love to see her leave NYC and try a new field. But it’s not easy to take risks and find or follow your passion when life feels precarious. If you have people depending on you, and if you don’t have folks to fall back on, you can’t afford to risk too much…and if you grew up feeling insecure, it can be hard to accept and believe that you’re finally secure. Precarity in my childhood caused a lot of anxiety and I still grapple with its lasting effects. I’m risk-averse in some situations and at other times, it’s commitment that terrifies me—settling down, having a steady job, slipping into a holding pattern, being bound to someone by a sense of duty. In one class I used to challenge my college students to prove that love *wasn’t* a form of enslavement for Black women! So these prompts that Owen shared today really resonated with me. He’s scheduling sessions now and I’m thinking about doing another 90-minute reading with him. I usually try to write something about goals and growth for the winter solstice; these questions are tough but important—a good place to start:

What emotional thresholds approach us? What are our growth edges, especially in terms of our personal relationships and our capacity for collective interdependence?Which patterns, behaviors, and practices have been protective partners to us, but now might be holding us back from moving more deeply into authentic connection & living by a love ethic? Which of these patterns, behaviors, and practices are we ready to shed? Which do we still need in order to feel safe?How might we bring more love and compassion to ourselves and one another as we work to balance our need for safety and protection with our need for more authentic connections?

I made a list of my own for The Reading Culture podcast; host Jordan Lloyd Bookey asked really thoughtful questions during our interview and she invites all guests to make a reading list. Mine focuses on middle grade fantasy fiction set in Chicago—you can find it here.