You hear a lot about the green-eyed monster in this business; writers jealously pointing out this author or that deal and wishing/craving/pining for it to be true for them, too, and that one day we will each have our own international tour, be welcomed on Oprah, have a 7-figure deal. But the truth is that while each of us worries over the future of the publishing industry and our own paths on its winding roads, I can say without a doubt that I haven't met a more supportive, kind & welcoming crew as I have as a YA author.

Conferences like SCBWI and RWA are contact highs of inspiration and mind-blowing brilliance, ALA and BEA and other "rock star" events are like Disneyland on a Sugar Rush for books and their fans, and the chance to sit and talk with other people who are passionate about reading and writing (whether in person or online) is perhaps the brightest spark in the day: it's where we can understand and can be understood, we mere mortals who've been gripped by the Muse behind our keyboards and red pens everywhere. These are our peeps and tweeps. We want everyone to succeed Big Time!

I've been there when people I knew got prestigious awards, jumping up and down along with a crowd of editors, bloggers, and YA librarians; I witnessed someone getting a two-book deal on the phone and I actually screamed at my computer when a friend announced her Significant Deal. I sent an e-card when an online friend finally got an offer from a great agent. It's indescribable, really. It lights me up because they light up, they *so* deserve it, and when good things happen to good people, it's impossible to feel bad about it because it's wonderful & there's more than enough wonderful to go around!

Really, there is.

"How do you measure success?" Because when you look at the numbers or the print run or the PW report, it's only a small indicant of what's been going on for years. I decided I couldn't "rank" books or review them anymore on Goodreads or Amazon because now that I know what it takes to make a book happen, I couldn't be a good judge because I was no longer blind to the struggle. You published a book? You deserve kudos.

So when I went searching for a word to mean "joy at the success of others" (sort of an opposite of "schadenfreude"), the smart and savvy agentess Jennifer Laughran suggested "erfolgefreude": "successes joy", that bubbly feeling when you know someone you know just had something amazing happen!

It's the sort of infectious smile that this video gives me every time!

Erfolgefreude. Own it. Love it.

The green-eyed monster doesn't stand a chance!

So I was away in Branson on a writer's retreat and managed not to get any writing done. (In fact, I think any time at the laptop was spent with the Delete key.) Yet I got a ton of information about writing, the business, my project ideas, and associative brilliance just by being around creative people actively being creative and the excitement as they shared the things they were most passionate about. I call this the "popcorn" effect, watching someone light up when they share what matters to them most. It's a total contact high.

The retreat wasn't formally organized so much as mutually-agreed-upon taking care of one another, lapsing into long bouts of silence or loud games of foosball with an almost unconscious pact between folks across a very long table while various taxidermy animals glared down from on high. Everyone chipped-in with the cooking, the cleaning, the shopping trips and the music in this sort of symbiotic amoeba of creative consciousness while snowed-in on a hill overlooking a lake in a moose lodge with 23 YA authors and intermittent Internet and lighting. There were some organized events like Jackson Pearce's live chat shows and the nightly share known as "kindergarten" where we went around the room answering a question of the evening.

One question was about what we love most about other people's writing and what were our own strengths and weaknesses in our own writing; something that came up was that writers felt comfortable either writing kissing scenes or fighting scenes, but never both. That got me thinking about my own writing because I don't really feel comfortable writing either one.

To be fair, that's not 100% true because I'm familiar enough with both karate and kissing that I can make a plausible scene out of the *ahem* blow-by-blow accounts, but really these are both difficult ideas because they are attempting to describe an immediate reaction to something that taps into an area of our lives both instinctual and overwhelming that happens in an instant. By nature, the more words your use to describe it, the longer it takes. (This is why you don't use the word "suddenly" in writing because it steals the momentum of the moment if you require the reader to take the time to read the word "suddenly"!) If it's a lingering kiss or a slow-motion cleave of a sword through someone's innards, which are now "outers", then yes, this can work; most of the time, though, it's one of the hardest things to do well. Like humor. Or Shakespearean dialogue.

After thinking about it for far too long, I concluded that one of my strengths is actually the sensory build-up, the anticipation of the moment; the wanting, the shuddering, the shivering "If Only" that tantalizes just before the "Yes" or "No". Much like the threat of violence or the smell of rain before the storm, it's the moment before the Fall that works best for me.

What do you think are YOUR strengths and weaknesses? What turns YOU on in the books you love most?

Talk about love? Here's the old U2 Batman song set to a new montage of Heath Ledger's Joker. Excellent!

Happy Valentine's Day!