Mount Freakout (or so Ariel tells me)
I wouldn’t call what I had the other night a meltdown. Meltdown equals some sort of crying or wailing and the strong desire to consume a lot of tequila and play Joni Mitchell all night on an out-of-tune piano.
I suppose, despite it sounding flip, what I had was instead a sort of existential crisis.
In a word, I am feeling very concerned about the book. I am not concerned about the edits: those continue to go really well, my editor continues to rock the house, even to the degree of, in places, allowing me to be a bit bolder in some not-so-popular statements which my previous editor would NOT have supported. Even to the degree of sending me a book full of recipes for vegan cupcakes. I am also — so far — not concerned about the marketing issues. When I came into this agreement, I was very firm on some title (nothing cutesy, nothing too woo-woo, salacious or attempting to be outr? or purposefully provocative) and cover (NO photographs, no objectified women/teens, no “token” couple illustrations, given that unless you had ten couples on there, you’d likely be stuck with young, middle-class, white, pretty as the only representation) issues, which my editor backed me in 100%, and she is all kinds of scrappy. You can never control, entirely, the art department and marketing, but I feel pretty confident I’ll be supported in my limits. I’m not even all that concerned about it doing well financially/sales-wise or not: it’d be great if it did well, both for how much I think it’ll benefit the readers, and because making a little money after six years of working it would be swell, but my world will not end if it happens to bomb, especially since at a certain point, I managed to get decently unattached to the idea it’d ever find a publisher ballsy enough to put it out there at all.
None of that stuff or anything like it is my big worry.
My big worry is that I will fuck this up. That what seems dead-on to me misses the mark. That everything I thought I learned from, effectively, millions of Scarleteen readers over the years, and tens of thousands of emailers and board posters, is somehow wrong. That I’m either talking over or under their diverse, collective heads. That it’s too late, in the world where they grew up fed on Girls Gone Wild, cosmetic surgery as a change of clothes, and crappy gender roles that somehow have made a comeback since 1955; where 80% of girls who are sexually assaulted by their partners continue to date them, where the best a lot of these kids feel they have to look forward to with sex is maybe an orgasm and maybe a partner they can have some small measure of trust in, to really do something good for them. That something this one kid needs the most will be the thing I forgot or didn’t have room for. (And I have this new weird niggle where I feel like part of this has to address the teen that was me: like this has to somehow make things better for her in this regard which is… well, it’s a good thing I’m not in therapy right now, because that’s so textbook it’d put a therapist right to sleep.)
That I will blow what really is a unique and amazing opportunity. Few writers with a first solo book know their audience is already alert and listening before their book even gets advance press, let alone hits the shelves. I already have my readership, internationally, in droves. I already have the best targeted marketing possible, and since I built it, I don’t even have to pay for it. More to the point, I already have the trust and faith of my readers.
Which means that they have given me the opportunity to make a profound difference in their lives and in the world, and I am starting to feel profoundly fearful that someone, some way, I will waste that opportunity and not do the very best I can for them, and that their trust has been sorely misplaced.
Okay, it may as well be said, because we all know this about me already. I have a severe heroine complex. I know, I know. I have absolutely put a lot of responsibility for the world on myself, by myself, and while I certainly don’t think it’s up to me to save the world alone — or that I even could, or that absolute physical and emotional sexual health and well-being worldwide could fix all that’s wrong in the world — a lot of the time, I take more responsibility as one person than is probably sane.
But lord gawd, if I didn’t think it could make a really big dent, there’s no way I would have worked in almost nothing BUT sexuality for the last eight years. I mean, sure, I can be a horndog, but not enough of one to work as hard as I have for so little, be as isolated from every camp possible because of it as I have been, and sacrifice some of the vital things in my life I have to do this. I can’t tell you how many times over the last couple months of burning the candle at both ends with this, the ACLU case and then everything else I already do I have sat sighing with a great big miss-on for my Montessori classroom of yore, wistfully wishing I could be giving a simple, totally uncontroversial lesson in math with the red rods instead of explaining other sorts of rods entirely, and with a lot more at stake.
So, here I sit, right? I have this amazing open door. I have the goods, crafted painstakingly for years — years of writing and editing, years of broad, direct field research — and a great person to help me refine them even more and get them out there. And I really do have faith that if it were in any way possible to rear a generation or two with some WAY healthier attitudes and approaches to sex and sexuality, to their bodies, to sex and gender issues, to sexual orientation, to sexual relationships, it WOULD be a truly revolutionary thing, for all of us.
(But especially for them. The longer and longer I do the work I do with them, the more and more it emotionally burdens me and wears me out, the more I really, really want everything to be better for them in this regard. If a genie gave me three wishes, this would be one. Another would probably be for the ability to make my pug immortal. I’ll get back to you on that last one.)
It’s just that, you know, I get sent books on sex that come out for teens. And to say that sparing maybe one exception, to say I’m beyond disappointed most of the time is a substantial understatement. A lot of the time, I just want to throw the book against the wall, whether it’s because of sexism, heterosexism, a total mind/body disconnect, commercialism, a serious lack of respect for the readers and their intelligence, classism, what have you. People usually fuck this up, and that’s not just because some people are stupid. It’s because it is really fucking hard to get this right. Teen sexuality is a big-time sticky wicket, and all the more so in our culture and, from my vantage point, right now, at this point in time.
Given that, and given my various complexes, suffice it to say, I remain unconvinced that I, too, will not muck this up like so many other smart, kindhearted people have before me.
Fuck all, is that terrifying.
And I know, it’s also kind of stupid. I am as much an overachiever as ever, and thus, have in no way scrimped on research, fact-checking, and all the legwork to do this to the best of my ability. I have worked this field in a way I don’t know anyone else has. SO many people — and I’m mostly talking to myself here, to try and convince myself, but feel free to listen in if you want — have now read all or parts of this book in various stages. I have a nice focus group of ST readers on it again this time around. I’ve learned what I have per what to address and how to address it from what THEY have asked me — not what I’ve decided they need to know — and from answering them, en masse, for years. My editor has 100% faith in me. My partner has 100% faith in me, Some friends and colleagues — even some idols — I really respect and know wouldn’t do me the disservice of bullshitting me have 100% faith in me. So do these readers.
Why don’t I?
Wish I knew the answer to that.
I mean, look, I think this is probably healthy. I think anyone who really cared deeply would have this concern, and that anyone who didn’t have it likely doesn’t care as much as they should. I think my being this concerned about this will be one more thing to assure that this IS as great as I hope it can be, and do all I think it can do. I think: I also am a little worried that if these concerns escalate or go off course they might have the opposite effect of causing me to have my vision obscured by some sort of self-absorbed obsession with failure or anything less than utter heroism. I mean, I baked a pie the other night that didn’t turn out right by my standards, and despite the fact that I have anything even approaching a cooking blunder maybe once every year or two, I was totally annoyed with myself and apologizing left and right to everyone who just happened to be trying to enjoy my pumpkin-flavored self-assigned disaster.
Ai carumba. This? Right now? I didn’t need. I shouldn’t be surprised: I have an awful lot all coming together at once, and on the heels of some big changes for me, including living clear across the country and that Love of One’s Life thang kicking my rump in the (best, but) most alarming way. I’ve been so overcommitted and overworked that I haven’t been able to have any time at all to do any artwork. It should come as no great shock to me that with a project like this, all of my various complexes about responsibility, accountability, caretaking, adolescence, working-enough-to-be-found-worthy and overachieving would come to a big, puss-filled head.
I have the psychological equivalent of the world’s biggest zit, right on the tip of my nose, on the eve of the most important date of my life.
Isn’t that fitting.
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