Smart Girls Know Update

Smart Girls Know Affirmation: Smart Girls Know To Consider Advice Carefully
When you’re super stressed out or have a major dilemma going on in your life, do you turn to your friends or family for helpful advice? If you’re like most of us, when you pour your heart out to a friend about a tough situation, you’re looking for someone to tell you you’re not crazy, let you know they support you, and tell you exactly how to move forward in the least stressful way possible.

Sometimes advice can be a great thing. It can give us:

• a new perspective on a challenging situation
• feedback from someone who’s (potentially) not as emotionally connected as we are
• information we may not be aware of
• comfort in knowing that there is a way to deal with whatever is at hand

On the flip side, advice can also:

• make us feel more stress about an already difficult situation
• confuse us by planting new ideas in our head
• get us more worked up than we initially were
• give our power away by putting someone else’s perspective above ours

Be Smart About Advice

Here are some ideas for being smart about the advice you give and get:

• Consider the source: Sure, everyone has their own perspective, but everyone also has their own motives. Even if your advice-giver has your best interests at heart, they still come to the situation with their own set of baggage. When you do seek out advice, get it from people you trust and admire and whose ethics are in-line with yours.
• Don’t be rash: When you get advice about how to handle a situation, don’t just take her word for it and go into action. Take your time, weigh your options carefully, and make sure that following the advice is something you’re comfortable with.
• Play out the scenario: When you’re thinking of taking someone’s advice, try to determine what the possible outcome of moving forward in that way might actually be. Even if you can’t see the future, you can at least get a sense of what might happen as a result of following the advice. Then make sure it feels good to you!

Need Some Advice?

Of course, there are lots of great places to go for advice, beyond your friends and family and nearest and dearest. Here are a few ideas on where to turn the next time you need another point of view:

• teen and tween magazine advice columns
• your favorite authors, mentors, and heroes (just be prepared to wait a while for a reply)
• Real Girls, Real Advice with Jess
• It’s My Life
• Teen Advice.com
• Student.com

For a little more on ADVICE, check out my must read book of the month below, A Little Friendly Advice!

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Do you have questions you’ve been dying to ask your favorite YA authors? My publisher, Simon Pulse, is holding its first Pulse Blogfest. From March 14 – 27, you’ll be able to interact with your favorite authors (including me!), have them answer your questions, and get bonus content from a ton of authors. There are more than 50 authors participating in this blogfest with me, including:

Marc Aronson, Avi, Judy Blume, Jennifer Bradbury, Deb Caletti, Janet Lee Carey, Rachel Cohn, Sharon M. Draper, E.R. Frank, Lorie Ann Grover, Karol Ann Hoeffner, Ronald Kidd, Julie Linker, Phyllis Reynolds Naylor, Deborah Reber, Sonya Sones, Wendy Toliver, Scott Westerfeld, and many more more.

See the complete list of participating authors here or visit my blogfest page here.

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This Month’s MUST READ (and Bonus Interview with the Author!)

I’m so excited to tell you about the new amazing novel , by my friend Siobhan Vivian. I first met Siobhan when I was working for Cartoon Network in Los Angeles, and she was at the Disney Channel. She had a very cool job working for the big cheese of programming, but she had dreams of becoming a YA author. I think it was about 4 years ago that we met for lunch and she told me she was planning to move back to NYC to get her MFA in Creative Writing. Well, she did, and obviously she did something right, because her first novel just came out from Scholastic’s PUSH and it is fantastic!

Here’s what the book’s all about: Ruby’s turning sixteen, and all she wants to do is overdose on ice-cream cake, throw a crazy party, and take tons of pictures with her vintage Polaroid camera. That is, until her long-lost father shows up and instantly turns the sweetest birthday sour. Her three friends–loyal Beth, dangerous Katherine, and gossipy Maria–always give Ruby advice about what boys to kiss and how to dress, and they’ve got a lot to say about her dad’s unexpected return. But really, Ruby’s not sure what to think or feel. Especially when a cute new boy named Charlie comes into the picture … and Ruby discovers some of her friends aren’t as truthful as they say they are.

I’m so happy for Siobhan in taking some pretty big leaps of faith and following her dream, and it’s so exciting to see it pay off. I thought you might want to know more about her journey and how she got to be a big-wig author, so I asked her to answer a few questions for us about the writing life:

When did you first know you wanted to be a writer?
It was during the summer between my junior and senior year in high school. I was enrolled in creative writing class at pre-college program in Philadelphia. The class was called ZINE (an indie magazine) and it was such liberating way to approach creative writing—basically, anything goes in a ZINE. I think I did a spread about Fast Food Horror Stories, an Ode to PeeWee Herman, and a short essay about some idiot boy who had been teasing me at the time. I’d never written much I was passionate about until then (just reports and stuff for school), but once I did…I was hooked!

How did you figure out how to go about becoming a published author?
When I decided that I wanted to try and become an author, I knew very little about the book world. So I enrolled in a MFA creative writing program to get my prose in tiptop shape, and I also got a job as an Editorial Assistant so I could learn the business side of the industry. Both experiences were so helpful in helping to get me published.

What was the biggest hurdle you had to overcome in pursuing your goal of becoming an author?
I’d say the hardest thing for me was to trust the process of trial and error. It’s such a frustrating experience to put time and effort into a story, only to figure out down the road that it might not be working. But for every “mistake” I’ve made, the story gets stronger and stronger, so long as I stick with it. And when you know something finally is working, it’s a totally euphoric feeling!

What is it about writing as a career that is the most challenging?
It can be a lonely job. I’ve been lucky that I’ve made a few great friends who are also writers. We go to a coffee shop together, plug in our laptops, and barely speak to each other for three hours. But it’s nice just to have someone sitting across from you.

What is it about writing as a career that is the most rewarding?
I’ve just started to receive letters from girls who have read my book. To hear that other people, people you don’t even know, have connected with my writing is beyond thrilling. Also, I get a lot of girls who write to tell me that they are in love with Charlie, the boy in A Little Friendly Advice. He’s my total dream boyfriend, and it’s fun that other girls have crushes on him too.

What was the inspiration for A Little Friendly Advice?
I had a girlfriend in high school who was in this really frustrating cycle with her crappy boyfriend. They would fight like crazy, break up, then make up a few days later…over and over again. Our mutual friend eventually got fed up. And one day she said something like, “Do what you want, but don’t come crying to me the next time he hurts you.” I was really taken by this situation, because I could see both sides. I understood why she was frustrated, but I couldn’t imagine abandoning our friend either. So, that’s where the idea came from—a moment where you can be caring and callus at the same time.

Is the life of a writer any different than you expected it would be? And if so, how?
Definitely! I thought I would be more confident approaching my second book, having one novel under my belt. SO NOT TRUE! I think every story is it’s own singular experience, and while you gain experience as you keep writing, you’re always going to feel a little unsure of yourself.

What’s next for you?
I’m working on my second novel. It’s called SAME DIFFERENCE, and it’s partly based on my experience at the summer pre-college program I mentioned above. It’s about a girl named Emily who struggles with having two different identities—depending on whether she’s at home with the popular, suburban friends she grew up with, or hanging out in a city with a super cool, wild new girl she befriends in a summer art class.

To find out more about Siobhan and her book, visit her website here!

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Countdown to CHILL

Lastly, my new book for teen girls, CHILL: Stress-Reducing Techniques for a More Balanced, Peaceful You comes out in just three weeks! I cannot wait to bring this baby out into the word!! Stay tuned for more on this soon…