Just a small, encouraging thought I had this evening that could possibly, maybe help with your Sunday night writer’s block?

Human beings, inherently, are storytellers. Think about it– we dream. All of us do. Our dreams begin, and end. Things happen in them, and often they mean something. And even when its meaning is foggy, there’s something being recorded there. Details from your life are being arranged in some way and it’s your brain that’s doing it for you. On the low, without you telling it to. Putting ideas in order and leaving an impression for you to remember when you wake up.

The way our brain translates information is by literally turning it into a story. If our brains can do this subconsciously, while we’re sleeping, you sure as hell should be able to do it when your eyes are still open and your brain is in tune. CHU KNOW? Great! Keep writing. Cyaaaaa.

Helloooo from New Jersey. Yesterday I had the displeasure of getting the e-mail that a Borders in my area was closing– specifically, the Borders I grew up loving and going to all the time ever since I was a little bookwormin’ weirdo. There’s been a Borders at the Garden State Plaza mall in Paramus, NJ ever since I can remember. First there was the old one, with the red-lettered sign (#90sswag?)… small, cozy, two stories… the children’s room in the basement, I remember, had a stage for storytelling. This was before Barnes and Noble got all macho with their bookstores–this was before the franchising really started. I remember being about 8 sitting up on that stage waiting for my dad and reading an Amelia Bedelia book while these two pre-pubescent twerps next to me peeped a book about the human body. They were laughing at the penises and making sure it was tilted AWAY from me to protect my widdle eyes. They couldn’t have been more than two years older than me. When my dad returned with a cup of coffee (It was not Seattle’s Best– Borders didn’t start serving coffee in their stores until 2004), the kids had since gone, and right before heading to the checkout I placed my Amelia Bedelia book back on the shelf and instead picked up the Anatomy book the kids had left sitting on the stage, and offered it to the cashier for scanning and bagging.

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Happy Oscar Weekend.

Similarly to the way I spent all of my allowance money of the late 1990’s on “Official” books about Leonardo DiCaprio’s life (Lovin’ Leo, anybody?), I think about kids of this decade as being hypnotized with love for books about vampires who make out, werewolves who make out with vampires, and Justin Bieber biographies (this Amazon bestseller, which is subtitled “First Step 2 Forever”, is a hearty 240 pages and claims to be”100% official”). I’ve just assumed that the Twilight kids were the ones responsible for the YA industry’s big sales boom of the past few years. But when you take a look at the New York Times Bestsellers list for children’s books, it is a refreshing surprise: there is not one Twilight book in sight, and only one book’s tagline makes mention of a werewolf. In fact, the top three bestselling children’s book paperbacks of the moment deal with rather serious and consequential themes– censorship, the absence of love (ok, it’s close), and being different (and accepted for it), respectively. Meanwhile, the NYT Bestseller’s list for adults is rounded off by James Patterson and two Stieg Larsson books– granted, adults don’t have schools buying mass quantities of books to teach in English classes but still, whatever this contrast says is interesting to think about.

I’ve taken an interest in Young Adult fiction ever since I realized how many books I read as a child have stuck with me in ways that a lot of literature I’ve read in the past five or so years has not. And when I say “stuck with me” I don’t mean just books I remember– I mean these books have impacted, subconsciously or not, the things I write about now. When I googled the entire list of Newbery Award winners (1922-present), I realized that I distinctly remember reading and enjoying most of the books that won or were honored by the award’s academy between the years 1993-2000. Even now, looking back to Lois Lowry’s Number the Stars or Jerry Spinelli’s Maniac McGee, I am not simply fond of the nostalgia these titles generate, but of the stories these books told.

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