[Editor's Note: This post originally appeared on BlogHer.com.]

Last Saturday, I packed my bag, drove to St. Louis and attended the young adult literature/anti-bullying Less Than Three Conference hosted by New York Times best-selling young adult author Heather Brewer.

I knew it would be interesting, but I didn't know it would be life-changing. The sessions ranged from cyber-bullying to self-bullying to school bullying to LGBTQ bullying and were led by young adult authors who had written novels discussing -- in some fashion -- bullying. By the end of the day, I learned every author up there had done what I myself have done: They wrote around the thing that hurt them.

A.S. King: "All bullying is embarrassing to the victim."

Heather Brewer gave the keynote address. "Fourth grade is the first time I remember wanting to die," she said, and the air in the room expanded in an instant. My daughter is in fourth grade. A little piece of my heart broke off and floated away imagining a fourth-grade Heather.

She told a story of trying to hang herself in her closet as a teen. When the bar broke, she didn't tell anyone, because she was unsupported at home and didn't have a friend -- not one friend -- until she was a freshman in high school. When she made that one friend, everyone said they were lesbians, because the only reason someone would hang out with her had to be sexual favors. Her teacher laughed at her the day someone wrote "LESBO" on her folder. She carried the folder all year to show it hadn't hurt her. She didn't care about being called a lesbian if she had a friend. All she wanted was a friend.

T.M. Goeglein: "Never think no matter what you say, it won't help -- if you have the chance to say something positive, do it."

Heather wasn't the only one. Every author had a story. They could remember the exact names of their bullies and see the faces of their bullies in their mind's eye. That these talented and successful people shared that shame drove home how universal the experience can be and how powerless anyone can feel at the hands of a bully.

Carrie Ryan: "The reason it gets better is that we make the choice to make it get better."

At the end of the day, I left St. Louis and drove back to Kansas City wondering how my life might have been different if I'd been one of those teens attending the panels, if I might not have fallen prey to anorexia, if I might have learned to love myself more and ignore the voices in my head telling me the rules were different for me. And I wondered if kids who bullied other kids in my high school might have thought twice if they'd heard Heather's story. "In every school, there is 'that kid,' and it is acceptable to pick on 'that kid,'" she said. "I was 'that kid.'" I remember several "that kids" I knew while growing up. I remember standing by. I remember joining in. I'm so ashamed to say that, but it's true. I never was a ringleader, but I was a follower of leaders. And really, there's no excuse for any of it. There are reasons but not excuses. By the time I was in high school, I knew better and I don't remember being mean, but by the second half of high school I was lost to the voices in my head forcing me to run bleachers and eat fewer than 800 calories a day even after it grew painful to sit and I grew fine hair all over my cheeks as my body tried to protect itself from my mind.

Ellen Hopkins: "You have to ask the person, "What is the reason behind self-harm?" Because there is always a reason."

Maybe I would've been different if I would've had the chance to hear successful adults talk about overcoming, surviving, moving forward. Maybe I would've been different if I'd had my nose stuck in Heather's story. "I'm in every school, and I'm usually quiet," she said. "Give me something to hold onto."

Give me something to hold onto.

Posts on Bullying

• Holli Long writes about being a safe person to talk to.

• Julie Ramanow writes about dealing with adult bullies in the workforce.

• Becoming Supermommy writes about being raped and abandoned in the snow at 14.

• Another Piece of Cake writes a thank-you note to her bullies.

Anti-Bullying Resources

• PACER's National Bullying Prevention Center

• Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration

• I Choose

• Project Anti-Bully

Cutting and Self-Harm Resources

• S.A.F.E. Alternatives (Self-Abuse Finally Ends): 1-800-366-2288.

• Mind Infoline – Information on self-harm and a helpline to call in the UK at 0300 123 3393.

• Kids Helpline – A helpline for children and teens in Australia to call at 1800 55 1800.

• Kids Help Phone – A helpline for kids and teens in Canada to call for help with any issue, including cutting and self-injury. Call 1-800-668-6868.

Support for LGBTQ Teens

• National directory of Gay-Straight Alliance school organizations

• The Trevor Project

• Welcoming Schools

Eating Disorder Resources

• AED Academy for Eating Disorders

• EDA Eating Disorders Anonymous

• Eating Disorder Coalition for Research, Policy and Action

• Eating Disorder Foundation

Tonight I'm throwing my laptop, my manuscript notes and a few audiobooks in the car and heading over to St. Louis for the Less Than Three Conference. It's a conference put on by young adult author Heather Brewer, whom I met at the young adult track at RT Booklovers back in May. All the panels are put on by young adult authors and discuss various aspects of bullying that they've written about in their books. I'm excited to meet some of the authors I admire but have not yet met and also say hi to those with whom I've had the pleasure to shake hands. And of all the panels, I'm most excited about the one on bullying yourself -- which is, of course, where THE OBVIOUS GAME fits in.

After a long quiet period, I've had two emails this week from family members frustrated with their anorexic sibling or daughter. It's a relief at this point to have something solid to point to, to be able to say, here, read this, tell me if it helps. I hope it helps. I hope you can talk to each other after.

Growing up is really hard, but so is being grown up. What no one tells you is that for some people, high school never ends. Some people stay bullies permanently, stymied in their growth at tenth grade. Adulthood in many ways is finding the inner strength to surround yourself with people who lift you up instead of tearing you down. Learning not to listen to those who feel better about themselves by telling other people they are utter shit.

There is always someone who will tell you that you are shit. You can look at that fact as depressing or empowering. 

Adulthood for me has been about learning to stop bullying myself. I don't remember being bullied nor being a bully, except with myself. When I bully myself, that anger turns outward, too. That's what I tried to tell the people who emailed me this week. Please read the book. I know their pain is probably presenting as anger to you. It's hard to love someone who is in such pain they become nasty like an injured animal. It's not fair you should have to be the bigger person to love someone who is in pain. 

So I'm interested to see what this conference will be like. I'm excited to meet teen readers and see what they say in the sessions. I hope to come away with lots of ideas for new novels and feel inspired to turn back to the problems Meg struggles with in THE BIRTHRIGHT OF PARKER CLEAVES. I'll let you know how it goes, but I'm feeling more invigorated again. There might be a point, after all. 

The leaves haven't even turned yet, but last night I found myself lying on my daughter's bed with a frowny face.

My husband walked in. "You look upset."

Me: "Yes."

Him: "Should we move out?"

Me: "No. I mean, maybe. But I think it's just me. You moving out might not help, so you should stay."

Him: "Gotcha."

I proceeded to try to explain that it's October and October means cold weather is coming, and I'm at the first revision stage of THE BIRTHRIGHT OF PARKER CLEAVES, which feels like getting all your syllabi on one day and wondering how the fuck you're going to get all that work done in one semester. And maybe I was having a There's No Point to Any of It day, the kind of day where you realize you're just going to have to make the bed again tomorrow and you can be a totally awesome worker and then you'll retire and three years later the entire department will have turned over and someone will ask who the hell made the decision for the border to be goddamn orange and if you do publish books, they'll eventually go out of print, even the ebooks will find a way to go out of print. One of those days.

I felt like when Louis CK tells Conan about that time when you're in traffic and you have the forever empty feeling because it's all for nothing and you're alone, and Conan looks at him like, I'm not sure I want to admit in public that I know exactly what you're talking about. Can someone please hand me a smartphone? I need to check Twitter.

Yeah. I had one of those days yesterday. I'm still trying to shake off that feeling that really nothing I do is important or worth doing and really, I'm pretty sure that's just my fear talking and I should just revise anyway, because that's what you do in order to occupy yourself until you die.

KIDDING.

Sort of. Because even if that's what it is, maybe that's still something worth doing. 

If you are currently participating in the YA Scavenger Hunt, my page is located here.

In a few weeks, I'm going to be participating in my first ever YA scavenger hunt with sixty other young adult authors. Each of us is offering a book, so you could essentially win an entire young adult library doing this thing. Here's the explanation from the organizer, author Colleen Houck:

I'm very exited to reveal to you the 60, count 'em 60 authors that will be featured on the Fall 2013 YA Scavenger Hunt! That means that not only do you get access to exclusive bonus material from each one, and a chance to enter so many contests that it will blow your mind, but there is also an opportunity to win an entire library shelf full of books because each author will be giving away one featured book as a prize. - 

Here's the line-up:

THE BLUE TEAM

ANN AGUIRRE

AMBER ARGYLE

ANNA CAREY

SHELLEY CORIELL

KIMBERLY DERTING

TARA FULLER

CLAUDIA GRAY

TERI HARMAN

KAY HONEYMAN

AMALIE HOWARD

SOPHIE JORDAN

ALEX LONDON

DAWN METCALF

ELIZABETH NORRIS

KATHLEEN PEACOCK

KIM BACCELLIA 

CARRIE RYAN

JESSICA SHIRVINGTON

APRIL GENEVIEVE TUCHOLKE

JILL WILLIAMSON

_______________________________

THE RED TEAM

GENNIFER ALBIN

GWENDA BOND

RACHEL CARTER

JULIE CROSS

DEBRA DRIZA

MICHELLE GAGNON

SHAUNTA GRIMES

RACHEL HARRIS

P.J. HOOVER

TARA HUDSON

JESSICA KHOURY

KATHERINE LONGSHORE

PAGE MORGAN

AMY CHRISTINE PARKER

AMY PLUM

C. J. REDWINE

OLIVIA SAMMS

J. A. SOUDERS

CORINA VACCO

SUSANNE WINNACKER

_______________________________

GOLD TEAM

RITA ARENS

JESSICA BRODY

TERA LYNN CHILDS

TRACY DEEBS

SARAH BETH DURST

COLE GIBSEN

CYNTHIA HAND

LEANNA RENEE HIEBER

COLLEEN HOUCK

MICHELE JAFFE

SUZANNE LAZEAR

MINDY MCGINNIS

LEA NOLAN

FIONA PAUL

LISSA PRICE

GINA ROSATI

VICTORIA SCOTT

ELIZA TILTON

MELISSA WEST

TRISHA WOLFE

---

I'm still familiarizing myself with how this works, but it's going to be really cool. It runs from October 3-6. I'll be preparing some bonus material for THE OBVIOUS GAME, as will the other authors, and I'll run a giveaway here as well as the main one. Lots of fun! I can't wait to read some of these other books, too.

I'll use this URL and update this post and push it up to the top when more info is available, so if you want to participate, you can bookmark this page. More soon!

DJ Nibbles loves YA.

This week I'm finishing up my shitty rough draft of THE BIRTHRIGHT OF PARKER CLEAVES to send to my beta readers, and I'm pretty sure it sucks and they will think less of me for reading it. Yesterday, I tried to list THE OBVIOUS GAME on a discount site, but it wasn't accepted. I suspect it's a little heavy for their genre-heavy readership, which I totally get, but it was disappointing because I could use the boost in visibility on Amazon. This year I've watched other blogger anthologies rising to heights SLEEP IS FOR THE WEAK never saw when it came out. I realized a long time ago I don't have the personal following it takes to nudge my books over the echo chamber wall of who I know into the mainstream world of who I don't. It would take marketing dollars to get there, marketing dollars my publishers don't spend and I can't spend. I understand the business behind the business, but the art/business marriage keeps separate apartments. 

When I get low, Beloved always says, "But you got published." 

To which I retort, "But I didn't take off."

To which he responds with a frustrated stare, because he is never able to convince his ambitious and bullheaded wife that her goals are too lofty for her circumstance and abilities. Which is basically the premise of THE BIRTHRIGHT OF PARKER CLEAVES. It's something I have struggled with for years -- when my overgrown ambition does battle with my talent and financial support.

This week, BlogHer syndicated a post by Kyran Pittman, which discussed why creative people compare themselves to the superstars of their fields when accountants and bus drivers don't. She writes:

The actors who don’t get Oscar nominations, the authors whose books don’t make the bestseller lists, the songwriters who don’t go platinum, the cellists who aren’t Yo-Yo Ma -– they aren’t underachievers.

Oh, the metrics available in this world, how bone-crushing they can be. I've stopped looking at metrics more than once a week for anything -- my blog, my books, my weight. There are too many ways to measure yourself with indisputable numbers in 2013. I'm the type of person who prefers problems with no one answer. Am I a success? The numbers don't lie. But subjectively, am I a success? It depends on your perspective.

I fight every day to push away the feeling that everything I do artistically is the adult equivalent of chalk drawings on the driveway before a rainstorm. 

But Kyran's right. The point isn't to matter to everybody, it's to matter to somebody, and it's my job to beat back the emails telling me I'm not doing enough to market my work and the emails trumpeting who won this or that award or made this or that bestseller list. I can't really manufacture that any more than I can force a stock to go up or down on Wall Street. 

Who and how many notice the art can't be more important than the existence of art. The existence of the art has to be the point.

And so a new day starts, and I remind myself this again. 

I'm almost to the shitty rough draft stage with THE BIRTHRIGHT OF PARKER CLEAVES. It's about 10,000 words too short, but I don't know which 10,000 they should be. Also, I don't know the answers to certain questions myself, and those questions need to be answered in the draft. Finally, it's the clay and not the sculpture -- most of it totally sucks.

I spent about two weeks going through a printed-out version from StoryMill and trying to write connecting tissue because I'd written everything else just scene-by-scene and put it into the software. The export from StoryMill didn't look like a book. It looked like a bunch of scenes. So I ended up writing A on the paper and then handwriting out several pages of A in a notebook and so on until I got to Q. Then I went back in and typed all the handwritten stuff into the scenes in StoryMill and did another export.

Then I stopped. And I despaired a bit, I'll admit, because it just wasn't where I want it to be before I show it to my beta readers (God bless them). 

So I am taking this week to reread two books that have a bit of starlight to them, starlight I want to infuse into the characters of Helen and Parker in TBoPC. Perhaps if I wallow in the sentences of work I admire I'll get some inspriration by osmosis. Previous to this I've been reading a lot of dystopian stuff just for fun, but that's a totally different style than what I'm trying to achieve with TBoPC.

And so far, my sad little novel. Oh, it sucks. This part of the process is pretty frustrating. At least I've learned enough now to know I'm not done yet.

Collapsing on the stairs after finishing a jog. In the humidity, the sweat forms like an internal dropper is pushing it out of my arms, my legs, even my hands, before it slides away to plunk in perfect circles on the cement. In the first few minutes after I plop down, all I can do is breathe and sweat and regulate my heartbeat back down to normal. 

I seldom think of sweating as an action, but in the thickness of Missouri's August, it is. Cicadas strike up the band and then stop as quickly as they started while I sit and sweat. Drink some water. Sweat some more. I become aware of a breeze I swear did not exist on the hills, but here it is, lifting just the edges of the leaves, sweeping across my skin until slowly, the bubbles stop forming and the rivulets slow. I can feel my heart slowing, too: crisis averted, she's not moving so fast any more.

My daughter is sick to death of summer and excited about school. She's tired of the pool, tired of barbecues, tired of the back deck, tired of the top down. I find myself clinging to these things and my favorite time of year and even the sweating, because sweating means I could be outside without a jacket, all day long if I wanted.

My breathing normal, the sweat dried enough to allow me back to the keyboard and the chair and the work, I reluctantly haul myself off the front step and walk back into my life, instantly forgetting the feeling of my skin touched by air.

---

I thought this post in my head the other day, and then I forgot all about it, and then I realized I really should write it down before I forget it again.

Today I wrote a post I've been mulling for weeks over at BlogHer. Here's a teaser -- click the link at the end for the full post!

A few weeks ago, I drove down to The Writers Place in Kansas City, Miss., (full disclosure: I serve on the board of directors) to talk to a group of around twenty upper middle-school kids about writing fiction. We ended up talking about race.

I didn't start there. I started with writing process. I talked aboout how I wrote my first novel in ever-lengthening Word documents saved by date and how the novel I'm working on now is coming together thanks to software called StoryMill. How this time I'm writing in scenes, not chapters, because it's totally easier for me that way. Their eyes glazed. I passed around my scene list and long outline for my new novel. They shuffled the paper around the room. I was losing them fast, and I still had the better part of an hour to go.

The group of kids was diverse. There were black kids and white kids and Asian kids and biracial kids. So I threw out a question that has been nagging at me ever since I learned that children's book publishing hasn't kept pace with census data regarding racial demographics. How did the kids feel about a white author writing nonwhite characters?

Read the rest on BlogHer!

So I've been on about a ten-day social media cleanse. I drove home from Chicago two Sundays ago after BlogHer '13 with my sister. I was home just long enough to unpack, repack, pet Kizzy and kiss Beloved before the little angel and I drove up to Iowa last Monday to stay with my parents for four days, just basically hanging out with family, reading, writing and not working. 

We took shelter from a raging monsoon in St. Joseph and bought the little angel her first adult-sized pair of cowgirl boots.

We helped Blondie bestow extra BlogHer swag on our parents, who can't say no to a free coffee cup.

I went jogging in two different places on two consecutive days, and y'all, I ran wind sprints on my high school track, which is something I could not do in high school. I was so fucking proud of myself, yes, I was.

The little angel and I went to the Henry Doorly Zoo in Omaha.

She got some slippers shaped like flamingos, because really, why not?

My parents took the girl to see a dinosaur named Sue, and I spent three hours working on PARKER CLEAVES. We had aunts, uncles and cousins over for ice cream.

We drove back down to Kansas City on Thursday. We saw cousins and my uncle on my mom's side. My parents came with us and stayed Thursday and Friday nights. We made popcorn after dinner.

On Saturday after my parents left, we tried to go geocaching and got all full of bugs, so we ended up at the swimming pool instead. On Sunday, we went to the Kansas City Toy & Miniature Museum while it rained outside. The little angel and I watched The Great Outdoors AND Summer Rental and wished we could vacation with John Candy. I told her all about the eighties.

Today, I came back to work, remembering clearly what life was like before the Internet. 

It wasn't a total cleanse, because I did look at the mentions column of Tweetdeck and responded to anyone who talked to me. I hate leaving people hanging. And I checked my work and personal email a few times to delete spam and just keep things organized so today's re-entry wouldn't be too painful. And then I actually worked for a few hours last night, again in the interest of minimizing re-entry pain. 

Since I still used Google every 1.5 nanoseconds during my cleanse, I can tell you for sure I'm completely unable to delay information gratification anymore. If I don't know an answer, I get very agitated if I can't just look it up. But as much as I enjoy the social media part of the Internet while I'm working, I didn't miss it while I was away. I love all my friends, but I wasn't worried they would forget who I was or anything if I wasn't around for a few days. I didn't feel that lonely why is there no one to talk to weirdness I sometimes feel if I'm away from Twitter during the work day -- please tell me I'm not the only person who has ever felt like that?

I am coming to the conclusion it's vital for my continued forward motion to slam the lid on the laptop and use the phone as a phone for a few days every quarter or so. I can feel the beeping and zipping and zapping start to get to me at about the ninety-day mark. I'm really glad I stepped away for a little bit, especially right after the emotional and intellectual disco ball that is a BlogHer conference. I feel more equipped to deal now, at least for another ninety days or so. 

The Internet is a tool, not a life, right?