It’s Not You, It’s Your Penis: A Letter to My Middle-School Crush

I guest-blogged at Friday the Thirteeners, a group for YA authors with books debuting in 2013, with a letter to my middle-school crush.

A choice excerpt:

Dear Danny,

As you are well aware, I had a fervent crush on you for most of middle school. I’m still not sure exactly why. Was it your still-developing-but-already-pretty-impressive sense of snark? Your Geometry prowess? Your early forays into ‘90s grunge fashion?

Honestly, I think it’s that you were smart, and funny, and, well, you seemed non-threatening.

You and I both know the irony of all this, of course, which is that a few short years after the fervency of my crush on you had faded, I got it into my head that it was actually maybe OK to have a crush on a girl every now and then. And once that idea had gotten hold of me, it held on hard.

To read the rest of the post (including embarrassing reveals about my 9th-grade St. Patrick’s Day dance, the matchmaking efforts of my middle-school math teacher, and more!), head over to Friday the Thirteeners.

A (Hopefully Partial) List of Transgender-Spectrum Characters in YA

Show of hands, please: Have you ever read a YA novel with a transgender character?

No need to mumble an apology if you haven’t. Seriously. There are so few of these books out there that unless you specifically seek them out you’re unlikely to come across one. Oh, except for the one that hit the NYT bestseller list last June. (Thanks, Libba Bray!)

(By the way, if any of the terminology in this post is unfamiliar to you, here’s a good guide.)

The second book I wrote, the one that led me to my current agent (but which sadly did not sell), had a trans protagonist and a gaggle of trans-spectrum supporting characters. Said trans protagonist had originally been the best friend character in the very first book I wrote, and revealed himself to be trans about halfway through the writing of that first book (this being one of those situations in which the character knew far better than the author). I loved writing about him, which is why I put him at the center of my second book; he’s my all-time favorite character I’ve created, and even though I haven’t worked on his story in more than a year, he still talks in my head a lot and I love thinking of future stories for him and his friends. (Side note, does anyone else do that with your characters long after the book is done? Because I have this whole fantasy in my head for my former protagonist’s frat brother’s complicated adult life as an investment banker looking for love.)

Anyway, the book I just finished doesn’t have any trans-spectrum characters. At least, not as far as I’m currently aware (see above re: characters and the secrets they hold out on us). Which I am actually kind of concerned about. I have ranted before about how I think authors have an obligation to represent a full spectrum of characters, and I try to live by my own rants whenever possible.

But all of that leads into Deep Thoughts about what is involved in presenting a trans character, especially when they aren’t the protagonist. Which by necessity leads to Deep Thoughts about what it’s like to be a trans teenager, either of the out, closeted, or semi-closeted varieties. Because whereas with some categories of “diverse” characters you can get away with a couple of words of explanation ― for example, in the first chapter of your zombie apocalypse book you can establish a character’s diversity credentials with lines like “Kathy’s mocha-colored skin” (remember how in the mid-2000s it seemed like every best friend character resembled some sort of caffeinated beverage?), “Gary’s boyfriend,” “Trisha’s wheelchair,” etc. ― when it comes to trans characters it seems like there’s some obligation to educate the audience with a detailed, long-ass section like “Zach’s gender was assigned female at birth, but Zach feels more closely identified as a boy, and so at school he uses male pronouns, but his parents make him wear dresses on Sundays” and on and on and on, and poor Zach has to spend the rest of the book explaining what pronouns to use and he never has time to engage in any zombie-killing before his brain gets eaten (because zombies don’t care about your preferred gender pronouns, just how yummy your neurons are).

But to get back to the point about representation ― if kids on the non-straight end of the sexual orientation spectrum are underrepresented in YA (and they are), just think about how underrepresented that makes trans kids. Malinda Lo’s handy set of graphs shows that fewer than 1% of YAs have queer characters ― and of that tiny number of queer YA books published from 2000 to 2011, only 4% are about trans characters.

Given that, I tried to make a list of the YA novels I know of that have trans characters. It is a very short list. And while it’s possible that I’m missing some, the numbers would seem to indicate that it’s also entirely possible that I’m not. (It’s also worth noting that every book on this list came out within the past eight years, and the majority were within the past four. If you were looking for a trans YA book in the 20^th century, sucked to be you, kid.) (ETA: I should note that more trans YA novels are listed in the left sidebar of Lee Wind’s fantastic blog, but I’m not personally familiar with most of the others on his list.)

YA novels with trans-spectrum protagonists who narrate the story:

• Parrotfish by Ellen Wittlinger (female-to-male, 2007)
• Freak Show by James St. James (gender non-conforming, 2007)
• Cycler and (re)Cycler by Lauren McLaughlin (defies categorization, 2008 and 2009)
• I Am J by Cris Beam (female-to-male, 2011)

YAs with trans main characters who don’t narrate:

• Luna by Julie Anne Peters (male-to-female, 2004)
• Almost Perfect by Brian Katcher (male-to-female, 2009)
• Jumpstart the World by Catherine Ryan Hyde (female-to-male, 2010)

YAs with trans supporting characters (and surely there have to be more of these that I just don’t know about, right? Right???):

• Boy Meets Boy by David Levithan (male-to-female, 2003)
• Down to the Bone by Mayra Lazara Dole (genderqueer, 2008)
• Beauty Queens by Libba Bray (male-to-female, 2011)
• I Am J by Cris Beam (yes, I already listed this one above, but it’s the only YA I’ve come across that has more than one trans character in it, so it goes here too; 2011)

I have also ranted in the past about the phrase “I want to read about more characters who just happen to be gay,” which is something I hear said a lot, and which generally bothers me because it seems to dismiss or at least diminish something that’s actually a really important part of who a character is.

And yet, every now and then I do hear myself thinking, “I wish there were more characters who just happened to be trans.”

Because I look at a list like the one up there and I think, “Holy CRAP, we need more trans characters in YA in every way, shape and form.”

Because if a trans character can only make it into a YA if they’re the main character (which that paltry list of trans supporting characters would seem to indicate), and a YA with a trans main character only gets published once every year or two (as the lists of trans protagonists suggest), then that adds up to almost no representation whatsoever of an entire demographic. At all. Except for the same teeny tiny handful of books that everyone recommends over and over and over again.

And it’s not like YA literature is the only space where this is a problem. How many transgender kids have you ever seen on TV aside from on talk shows about transgender kids? And aside from the occasional “fabulous” drag queen, I don’t think I’ve ever seen a trans-spectrum teenager in any movie, ever.

But that said, I would love to hear that this is all my own damn fault for not reading the right books, watching the right shows, or Fandango-ing the right movie tickets, so please, if there is stuff featuring trans characters that I’m missing, tell me now so I can go check it out!

In the meantime, I think I am going to go reread I Am J again, so I can pretend it is 10 books instead of one.

I Am a Total Queer YA Reading Fail

I am a very slow reader.

Every now and then this is a helpful thing. Like when a new Harry Potter book comes out and everyone else finishes it the night they got it and then it’s over, whereas I will still be enjoying the thrill of that first read five days later.

The thing is, there hasn’t been a new Harry Potter book for four years now.

So I have had few occasions in which to relish my slow-reader status. In fact it’s quite the opposite. The more I immerse myself in the YA readership world, the more my slow reading becomes a pain in the ass. My TBR list grows and grows into infinity, and yet I keep hearing about new books coming out that OMG I MUST READ NOW OR I WILL DIE. Etc.

2011 was the first year I ever set out to track the books I read, which has resulted in making me that much more conscious of my reading speed fail, especially compared to my universally-much-better-read friends. I can look down the list of titles and dates and confirm that indeed, is not at all uncommon for it to take me two weeks to finish reading one book. Or three. Or even longer. No matter how much I enjoy the book (see above re Harry Potter), I just can’t force myself to read any faster.

But tracking my reading has also enlightened me to something else I might not’ve noticed otherwise: I am not reading enough books about queer people.

I just added a new column to my book-tracking spreadsheet (I have spreadsheets for everything, it’s kind of a problem) to denote queerness, and therefore discovered that out of the 27 books I’ve read so far this year (I know, it’s pathetic), only 5 had queer characters. Three books had queer protagonists, and 2 had queer side characters. So, 18% of my reading thus far in 2011 has involved some sort of queerness, and only 11% has involved significant queerness.

Given that every book I’ve written and every book I’ve ever wanted to write has had at least one queer protagonist, something seems off here.

Granted, 8 of the books I read this year were either published or set before 1970, back when queerness was That Thing We Don’t Speak Of, unless we were speaking of it this way: 

And of course much has been made lately of the fact, best demonstrated by Malinda Lo, that even today, queer characters in mainstream YA are few and far between.

All I can do now is try to make up for it over the two months left in this year. I’ve also been failing miserably in my goal of reading 10 books published in 2011 while we are still actually in 2011 (though I read 2012’s Born Wicked twice this year, does that count?). So I guess that means reading as much queer-inclusive stuff published this year as I can get my hands on. Happily, right now I’m reading Lauren Myracle’s Shine, which has queer secondary characters, and my Kindle already houses Brent Hartinger’s Shadow Walkers, Brian Farrey’s With or Without You, Alex Sanchez’s Boyfriends with Girlfriends, and Scott Tracey’s Witch Eyes. (And now I’m realizing how incredibly heavy my reading list is on the queer boys rather than girls ― but, well, that’s still very disproportionately what’s out there. And anyway, all these books look awesome.)

So, are there any other circa-2011 queer YAs I should add to my list? (For the record, I’ve already read I Am J and Beauty Queens.)

It’s More Complicated Than #YesGayYA

So tonight, as usual, I checked Twitter as I metro’d home from work. To my astonishment the big topic was queer YA.* This seems to happen, oh, once a year, so predictably, I got all excited, even though the initial story that kicked this off is not so much positive.

The backstory:

Two authors wrote a post on a Publishers Weekly blog about their experience shopping a YA SFF that featured five narrators, one of whom was queer and engaged in a same-sex romance. Although they got agent interest, there were also requests to change the queer character, and one agent offered representation on the condition that they make the character straight. They refused, and the novel is still unrepresented.

So, that’s nice and depressing. But on the upside, people started tweeting with the hashtag #YesGayYA, and all of those tweets were, obviously, pro-queerness.

My story:

I write exclusively queer YA. All my protagonists are queer, and usually most of the other major characters in my stories are queer, too. And I always have a strong central romance involving my queer protagonists.

I have a fantastic and extremely queer-supportive agent now, after a hunt that involved two manuscripts and more than 70 rejections. I’m working on my third queer YA novel now and eagerly awaiting my first sale.

None of the agents I queried ever asked me to change any character’s sexual orientation or gender identity. Nor did any of them ever say anything that hinted they were rejecting it based on the characters’ / books’ queerness.

But that doesn’t mean they weren’t.

This stuff is usually invisible, is the thing. It was really overt in the experience described in the PW post. But 99.9% of the time, I’m willing to bet, this stuff happens off the record, behind the scenes, entirely inside the heads of the various gatekeepers who control this industry.

Which is why it’s so hard to figure out how often this really happens.

Unlike with many genre authors, or authors of books with queer secondary characters only, there’s no logical reason anyone would ask me to de-queer a character. If I took the queerness out of my books, there’d be pretty much nothing left. It’s a lot easier to just send me a form rejection than to say “I can’t sell a YA book about a bunch of lesbos, sorry.”

On the other hand, there were plenty of other reasons for agents to have turned down my bunch-of-lesbos manuscript. I know, because I got personal rejections too. Rejections that pointed out flaws in the tone, the pacing, etc. — legit stuff that has nothing to do with the girl/girl makeout scene in chapter 12.

That’s why this stuff is so hard to talk about. It’s why, as the PW post points out, people are hesitant to speak out when it happens to them. It’s so hard to be sure when it’s really happening. There are always a bunch of other factors, and no one ever wants to accuse anyone of homophobia, or racism, or misogyny, or anything else, unless they are absolutely 100% sure. And even then, really, because all authors are so freaking paranoid (and with reason) about being blacklisted by the people who have the power in this industry (even though no one seems to be sure exactly who those people are).

There has been a rush today of editors, agents, etc., saying “We want queer YA! Send it to us, please! We are not like those other people!”

And I have no doubt everyone saying that means it, completely and unequivocally. But, as author Scott Tracey pointed out in his post on this, “That’s not exactly the same thing as putting out that content.”

My next book will be my first foray into genre, a ghost story. It’ll be my first book in which the character’s sexual orientations and gender identities aren’t intrinsic to the central plot. It’ll be the first time I’ll be in a position where an editor could ask me to de-queer the story. I’ve always had faith that no one will, but I don’t know. Maybe I shouldn’t have that faith. Just because I don’t hear about that happening much doesn’t mean it doesn’t happen, as today’s threads have proved.

And yes, sometimes when I get frustrated with this industry, sometimes when I read the daily sales lists on PM and wonder when mine will be there — sometimes I think, “This would be so much easier if I’d only start writing about straight people.”

But then I remember I don’t want to. No offense to my straight friends, of which I have many, but I just don’t think straight people are anywhere near as interesting as the rest of us. (Sorry! I still like you guys, I swear!)

I hope stories like today’s don’t scare other prospective authors of YA books with queer characters away. That’s always my first thought when this comes up, and why I tend to downplay it. After today, though, I don’t think I will. The code of silence around this issue has lasted long enough.

So if this does ever happen to me, will I come forward and say so? I’d love to pledge to do so here and now, but… well. I’m still just as paranoid as everybody else.

I’ll try, though, I’ll pledge that much.

By the way, lots of people have said lots of really fantastic stuff on this topic so far, most of them far better than I, so I’ll close this post by quoting some of my favorites.

On Being a Queer Writer

So, I spent last week in L.A. with these awesome people at the Lambda Literary Foundation’s emerging writers retreat.

For the past few days I have been struggling to figure out how to put the experience into the right words, and failing. So instead I will just say that it was not what I was expecting, and that it was an amazing experience that I can’t imagine ever forgetting. (And now I will ramble for a bit.)

When I hear the word “retreat,” I think “sitting and writing for hours and hours,” which is not what this was. I mean, it could have been in theory, because in between the workshops, the readings, and the panel sessions, we had a fair amount of unscheduled time. But that unscheduled time tended to be spent having long conversations about what it means to be queer and to write about queer stuff, and otherwise doing things that were not sitting and typing alone. (That being said my fantabulous roommate Anna-Maria McLemore did manage to, like, finish a book while we were there, so what do I know. Maybe everyone else did that too and I was just a big slacker.)

Instead of sitting and writing for hours, I sat and talked and listened and thought for hours, which is basically paradise for me, when the stuff I’m talking and listening and thinking about is as interesting as it was over the course of this week.

Because it was very much about owning my identity as a queer writer. Which, I’ll admit, isn’t something I’ve thought about much before now. Yes, I write, yes, I’m queer, yes, my characters generally are too, but that was sort of as in-depth as I’ve ever gone with it, my tendency to wax on about queer YA trends in #GayYA chats and in ranty blog posts aside. But with the level of discussion we had over dining hall tables and meeting rooms and dorm corridors over the past week… man. One of my workshop-mates, Allison Moon, tweeted, “There are times when young queers like me understand when our elders refer to ‘family.’ This week was such a time.” And that basically summed it up for me too.

“Just Happening to Be LGBTQ” Dismisses a Depth of Character

A couple of weeks ago during a #GayYA chat on Twitter, Lucas J.W. Johnson and I bonded over our shared annoyance with the oft-used phrase, “I want to read more YA characters who just happen to be LGBTQ.” (In fact I have blogged on this before, in rant form, as has Lucas, more thoughtfully.)

We were invited to continue the conversation on the GayYA blog, which btw is full of awesomeness, so we did, in a two-part post, because apparently we had a lot to say.

From part 1:

Robin: I think people usually just use the phrase as a shorthand term for when they really mean something like, “I wish there were more paranormal thrillers with LGBT characters in them.” Which is obviously a very understandable desire.

Lucas: Yes, and one that I share! The problem I find with it is that the shorthand term almost seems to downplay that part of the character, like them being gay isn’t really important.

Robin: Absolutely. If a character is LGBT, I as a reader WANT to know about that aspect of the character’s life. I want to know about it now as an adult reader, but I would’ve wanted to know about it a lot more when I was 16. People don’t just “happen” to be anything. And there’s a certain dismissive tone to the “just happens to be” phrase that I think is generally not intended. Just “happening” to be LGBT is not the same thing as just happening to have green eyes.

And from part 2:

Robin: I watched Princess Bride over and over and over when I was eleven, and if there had been a Princess Bride with Wesley as a chick, I’d have watched it at least 80 gazillion more times.

Lucas: Ha! A fair point! But even then, as we’ve discussed, it would make a difference to the story, small as it may be.

Robin: Right! If, in Princess Bride, Wesley had been a chick, it would have totally emasculated Prince Humperdinck. Even better comeuppance! But I would want to see Prince Humperdinck actively addressing the fact that Wesley was a chick and that he, the Prince, was obviously not doing it for Buttercup in that department. But mostly they’d all still just have spent the movie running around the hills swordfighting and such, same as ever.

Lucas: Haha, yep! And Buttercup would too have been dealing with more than just not being in love with Humperdinck. No matter the situation, making a character LGBT is going to affect the story. Even if it’s just in a small way! It is, in fact, those small ways that matter most. They’re what make the difference between a character trait like that being tacked on, and having actual organic, realistic characters and situations.

Robin: Yes. And the dangerous thing is when you try to write around those traits in the name of making sure your character “just happens to be” whatever.

(I really don’t know why I wound up talking so much about The Princess Bride, but now that I’ve thought about it, the idea of a queer version is really pretty exciting, no?)

Anyway, come on over to GayYA and tell us what you think!

Off to the Lambda Literary Emerging Writers Retreat!

So, tomorrow I will be gallivanting off to L.A. for a week for the Lambda Literary Foundation’s Emerging Writers Retreat. Said retreat is a very cool affair that will involve hanging out with 40 awesome writers of various genres and getting to learn from awesome workshop faculty — like, in the case of my workshop, the fabulous writer Katherine V. Forrest.

I’m really excited to spend some quality time focused on craft. I’ve read many a writing how-to book but never taken an actual creative writing class (I was always too intimidated to register for them in college, which was incredibly stupid of me — any aspiring writers who have not yet gone to college, please don’t make the same mistake I did!). So, I’m psyched to really delve into this stuff in a serious way for an extended period of time, instead of the usual routine writers do when they get together, which is to obsess and obsess and obsess over the ins and outs of the publishing industry. (Which isn’t to say that isn’t fun too. )

Plus, this retreat will be the official kickoff for the writing of my next project, Shiny New Idea, since I sent my Neverending 1950s WIP off to Awesome Agent yesterday for his thoughts, which means it is mercifully out of my hands for a while. My Shiny New Idea is currently still feeling very shiny, even though I’ve got about 50 pages of it first-drafted now, so I’m taking that as a good sign and looking forward to making it better (and hopefully longer!) over the next week.

Also, since this retreat is for LGBT writers (apparently the popular nickname for it is “gay writers’ camp,” hee), I am expecting to have lots of great conversations about various LGBT-related stuffs. (I know, I know, that will be so new and different for me! )

Also, since I am finally done with the Neverending 1950s WIP (for now), I hope to be a better blogger after I get back into town and things settle down. (As if I was ever such a good blogger, ha.)

Have a great week all!

What to Do If You Relate a Tad Too Much to Brittany and Santana; Or, Some Unsolicited Advice for Queer Teen Girls

Q: Does the fact that you find Naya Rivera hot mean you’re gay? A: No. It means you have EYES. HELLO.

So, like any good obsessive blogger, I keep an eye on what search terms people are using to land on my blog.

Lately my search terms have included a lot like these:

“Going through the same as Santana.”

“I can’t tell if I’m lesbian or just love Brittana.”

“Have the same issues that Santana and Brittany had.”

So, I figured, if you’re looking for that info, and you’re desperate enough to come all the way to my blog, I might as well try to help you out.

Brittany and Santana are actually going through quite a few different things, though, and since I don’t know which ones you’re looking for, I’ll take them in turns. [Btw, in case you have no idea what I'm talking about: link]

Disclaimer: Everyone’s experience is different. What works for me won’t necessarily work for you; neither will what works for your best friend, or that girl you met online, or your high school guidance counselor. Or, for that matter, Brittany and Santana.

Now, let’s dig in, shall we?

Issue #1: Am I gay? Bi? Something else? ARGH.

“I don’t know. I made out with a mannequin once. I even had a sex dream about a shrub that was only in the shape of a person.” — Santana

For a lot of people, especially a lot of girls under the age of 25 or so, this is the hardest part of all.

Let’s take, as our example, the Googler who doesn’t know whether she’s gay or whether she just really likes Brittany and Santana.

It’s an understandably tricky thing. Naya Rivera and Heather Morris are both really hot.

Hey, do you know who else is really hot? Darren Criss. Or Mark Salling, if that’s more your style. Or Harry Shum Jr.

Also hot? Dianna Agron. Jonathan Groff. Lea Michelle. Apparently even Cory Monteith has people drooling over him.

There is a theme here. Wait for it:

Famous people tend to be really hot.

And therefore: Which famous people you find hot usually has nothing to do with your sexual orientation.

The people you find hot in real life will offer you a better clue. But that’s not definitive, either. Sometimes it’s hard to tell the difference between sexual attraction and friendly affection, or respectful admiration, or straight-up loathing.

What sucks about all this is that there’s no magic formula for figuring out where you reside on the sexual orientation spectrum. Your only option is to figure it out for yourself. And what sucks even more is that often, figuring that out takes a long time.

In my opinion, Glee’s writers (who all happen to be guys ― I’m just saying) rushed Santana into claiming a lesbian identity too quickly. Unless she was lying to Holly Holliday (which she could’ve been), Santana was conflicted about her sexuality only a few weeks before she was putting on that “Lebanese” T-shirt.

It generally takes longer than that to figure yourself out. It takes a lot more introspection. And it often takes a lot more life experience.

Eventually, your feelings will fall into place. There’s no way to know how long that will take. And there’s no way to know what your final conclusion will be. Some people never come to identify with one of the three most common sexual orientations (straight, gay, or bi) ― because sometimes, sexuality is just more complicated than those arbitrary labels allow. And that’s fine. Those people still live perfectly happy lives.

So I can’t tell you when, or if, you’ll know the answer to that question that I know seems so important to you right now.

But what I can tell you is that you can’t force it.

You can think and think and think. You can talk and talk and talk. You can tear your hair out waiting to have a prophetic dream that explains it all to you.

Or you can suck it up and wait for it to work itself out on its own.

It will. Someday.

And here are some things you can do while you’re trying to figure it out:

• Write about your feelings in a journal. This can be especially useful if your feelings change from day to day, because then you can come back later and remember how yes, there really was a time when you considered inventing your very own sexual orientation so it could revolve entirely around James McAvoy.
• Talk to a trusted friend. Someone who will listen to you and help you try to sort out your feelings. Not someone who will try to impose their own feelings on you. You’ve got enough to deal with already.
• Talk to a trusted adult who is familiar with how gayness works. Sadly there are still a lot of people who aren’t yet informed about this stuff.
• Talk to other LGBT teens who are going through the same stuff you are, through groups in your community or on sites like Oasis or Scarleteen.

Oh, and by the way, if you’re thinking you can take a shortcut to figuring this out by having sex with a bunch of people of various genders? Sorry, it doesn’t work that way. When you’re having sex, no matter how you feel about the person involved, there are a ton of hormones flying all around that make it hard just to tell your left from your right, much less which gender you prefer. And the rarely-discussed truth of the matter is, sexual orientation is a lot less about body parts than it is about feelings.

By all means, sleep with whomever you want; I’m not here to judge. I’m just saying, it’s not going to help you with this particular question.

And no, to answer another question that apparently people are Googling like crazy ― you don’t have to have had sex to know what your orientation is.

Issue #2: Coming out.

“I can’t go to an Indigo Girls concert. I just can’t.” — Santana

Ah, the eternal debate.

Who to tell? How? When?

Not to repeat myself, but: Only you can answer that. Everyone’s situation is different. Blah, blah, blah; I know you’ve heard all this before.

I will offer some advice based on my own experiences and those of some of my friends, but please take every single word of this with the biggest grains of salt in your vicinity:

• Don’t start with your parents. At the very least, you need some practice before you go there. Start with a friend, or an adult you trust not to turn around and tell your parents without your permission.
• Until you’re ready for your parents to know, don’t come out to everyone at school (i.e., don’t walk around the halls holding hands with your girlfriend, or show up in math class wearing an “I Heart Pro-Choice Girls” T-shirt). You might think there’s no chance your parents will ever hear your school gossip. But you might be wrong. And it’s not a chance worth taking. Your parents deserve to hear the news from you, not some girl in the checkout line at Old Navy.
• When you do tell your parents, plan it in advance. Sit down and think through every reaction they could have. Tears of joy? Tears of despair? Tears accompanied by shouts of “You are no longer my daughter”? Think through every single realistic possibility, and think of what you’ll say in response to it. Write and memorize a script if that helps you. Your goal is to approach this logically, not emotionally. Your parents will already be emotional enough for the both of you.
• No matter who you’re telling, remember that coming out isn’t just a one-time thing. Anyone you tell will probably have questions for you in the days and weeks and months that follow. If the person asking questions is someone you care about, then answer their questions respectfully. Don’t make them feel stupid or shitty for asking you. Remember, you’ve known who you are for a long time, but they’re adjusting to a whole new reality.
• Unless they ask you if the lesbian experience is just like the Katy Perry “I Kissed a Girl” video. If they say that, then throw something at them, please.

Issue #3: Girl trouble, of the unrequited variety.

“Please say you love me back. Please.” — Santana

What if your concerns are less about identity and more about a particular girl?

Well. I wish I could say that’s easier. But if I did, I would be a big lying liar who lies.

I can say it will probably be less time-consuming in the long run than the identity questions. Both relationships and non-relationships tend to last months, not years. Not so much for that other stuff.

But I promise, no girl trauma is insurmountable. Your goal in all things romance, though, should be to avoid screwing yourself over whenever possible.

So, let’s say you’re in Santana’s situation. There’s a girl you like, and she likes you back, but not in the way you want her to. What are your options?

1. Have a screaming fight and swear never to see her again.
2. Keep hanging on and hope she changes her mind.
3. Give up on the romance and resolve to just be friends.

I suppose these options aren’t mutually exclusive. Though for your own sanity, they should be.

Option #1 is for the drama queens among us. Some of us, in fact, might follow this pattern over and over again. It’s exciting. Like living inside your very own soap opera.

But it gets old. Very, very old. And I promise, your friends will get sick of hearing your stories about your latest girl drama way before you get tired of telling them.

Option #2 is probably the most popular choice. Hey, it’s what Santana picked. And after all, you never know, right? Maybe your wildest dreams will come through in the end, and she’ll come back to you. And in the meantime, you get someone to talk to, and maybe to snuggle with, and maybe more too.

Here’s the thing, though. If you like her more than she likes you, and she knows that? Then she’s the one who holds all the cards. And that way lies heartbreak, sweetie.

It’s always possible that she’ll come around, change her mind. But it’s not likely. Much more likely is that she’ll find someone else she does feel just as strongly about as you feel about her right now.

And when that happens, do you want to be the friend watching from the sidelines while you cuddle with your new GF, the one who likes you too? Or do you want to be the girl who gets the awkward text messages reiterating what she tried to tell you back when you first talked about your feelings?

Option #3 is by far the hardest. It will hurt. A lot. But the sooner your heart gets broken, the faster it heals, as they say. (Wait, do they say that? Well, they should.)

Also, the girls you were once in love with make the very best friends. I know that probably sounds cruel, but it’s the truth. Those girls know you better than anyone. And when you do fall in love again, they’ll be thrilled for you ― and they’ll be the very best shoulder to cry on, when you inevitably need one.

I’m about to go all Lima Heights now.

OK, so here is the thing.

I wish there had been someone like Santana, or Brittany, or even Kurt, on TV when I was 16. Instead, all I had was Ellen DeGeneres and Melissa Etheridge. Which was more than the girls who came ten years before me got.

But when I was a teenager, if there had been teen girls making eyes at each other on primetime soap operas, I probably would’ve tried to emulate them in every possible way. I know I would have, because I did the same thing with the straight characters I related to. If there had been gay girls on my TV, I would’ve convinced myself that my situation was exactly like theirs. That I was going through the same problems they were, and that if I did things the way they did them, the outcome of my story would look a lot like theirs.

And I’d have been wrong.

Because TV shows tend to tie things up into unrealistically neat little packages. That’s just the nature of the medium. But it’s not the nature of real life. In real life, relationship issues don’t need to be resolved by season finales, and people’s sexual orientations don’t change just because someone wants them to.

It would be nice if the world really did work that way. But, alas.

So by all means, look for examples of your experience in the images around you. But don’t expect your life to go the way those fictional people’s lives do. Because yours is going to be a lot harder.

But it will be OK in the end. Really, it will. You can trust me on that one.

*hugs*

The Importance of Outing Dumbledore

Today I guest blogged at Gay YA:

While the Harry Potter series was still being released, I kept crossing my fingers one of the kids would turn out to be gay.

It didn’t seem that far-fetched an idea. After all, the series was otherwise doing a great job of representing diverse characters.

But more importantly, when I was reading the books for the first time, I was in my early 20s, and I was still getting used to the idea that this whole being-gay thing might indeed be a lifelong deal. I was eagerly looking around for representations of people like me. Seeing gay characters and gay celebrities made me feel normal. It made me feel like someone had noticed I was there. …

If J.K. Rowling had outed Dumbledore in the books themselves instead of doing it after the fact:

1. It would’ve made Deathly Hallows a stronger book, because readers would have had better context for understanding Dumbledore’s relationship with Grindelwald.
2. Readers of the book ― kids and adults alike, gay and straight alike ― would’ve seen a major gay character in the biggest book series of all time.

When people talk about gay visibility? This is what they’re talking about.

Check out the rest of my post there.

In Which I Mercifully Skip the Whining in Favor of Sharing Awesome Linkspam

Things I am not going to blog about today:

• The fact that people are STILL stumbling across my blog via Googling “Harry/Pippa fanfic” after I made ONE joke about that on Twitter the night Osama Bin Laden died. (Look, Obama took his sweet time stepping up to the mic and I had to do something to keep myself entertained.)
• The fact that my WIP simply will not refrain from kicking my ass, no matter how many times I tell it to, and insists on being reoutlined so many times I may just give up and become a pantser after all.
• My sudden irrational fear that my as-of-last-week favorite character will die in some horrific fashion on tomorrow night’s Glee prom episode (they wouldn’t do that to us, they wouldn’t, dang it!).

And so, because I am not going to blog about those things, I will instead point you to some fun stuff on the interwebs:

• “Nobody is simply the sum of the aspects of their identities,” says Everett Maroon in this post for Gay YA, which is the best post I’ve seen (in that I agree with it the most, ha) about (among other things) the importance of ensuring that your LGBTQ characters are, above all, sufficiently layered.
• I’ve had this post by Susan Beth Pfeffer, my favorite author blogger, open in one of my Chrome tabs for weeks now because it sums up everything I want to keep in mind as I revise my WIP.
• This collection of ancient British Baby-Sitters Club covers, courtesy of What Claudia Wore, is now what I look at whenever I feel the need to lighten up [via].
• And finally, because I recently saw Tangled for the first time and can’t stop thinking about this song, I will go so far as to embed it here. The relationship between Rapunzel and her “mother” in that movie is, to me, emblematic of the very best YA writing, and I only wish I had thought of it myself. The romance plot in the movie left me going “Eh,” but this was pure gold: