So, I’m going to apologize in advance for how long this post is. But it’s something I need to get off my chest.


Flashback to October 2007. I’m on fall break of my senior year of college, and meeting with the Director of a Very Prestigious Creative Writing MFA Program. As a Creative Writing major with graduation fast-approaching, my post-college options are limited if I want to write full-time. I can either a) go to an MFA program or b) be unemployed. Excellent.

I walked into that interview with a fair amount of confidence. I didn’t know anyone my age who had completed a novel, let alone thought about things like querying agents, and I was the best writer in my creative writing classes (pardon the douchebaggery). So, impressing the Director of this Very Prestigious MFA Program wouldn’t be too hard, right? Wrong.

Even though our meeting lasted about 30 minutes, I knew within the first two minutes that there was no chance in Hell I was attending that program. Or any MFA program, for that matter. Because when the director asked me: “What do you write?” and I said: “Fantasy novels,” she CRINGED.

No joke. She cringed. Like, her face contorted as if she was going to puke all over me. I have no idea how I made it through that meeting without punching her in the head.

There’s a point to this story, of course. And no, it’s not that if you insult Fantasy, I’ll mess you up. It’s about teachers—professors, whatever. It’s about what happens when the people who are entrusted with broadening your mind and bolstering your confidence either rise to the occasion or fail miserably.

The only reason I started writing was because of my seventh grade teacher. During my parent-teacher conference, my teacher, Stan (yes, we called our teachers by their first names—it’s part of attending a crunchy-granola middle school) commented on how I didn’t read. Somehow, I’d become more interested in nail polish and boys, and stopped reading. He was concerned, and told my parents to bring me to the bookstore and let me choose some books for myself.

I walked out of the store that day with SABRIEL by Garth Nix, THE HERO AND THE CROWN by Robin McKinley, and WIT’CH FIRE by James Clemens. If you follow this blog at all, you already know what an impact those books had on me. They made me want to start writing—they made me adore reading again, and love fantasy.

I didn’t attempt to write until we had creative writing class, when we were essentially thrown into the computer lab and told to write whatever we wanted. I’m pretty sure what I wrote was a rip-off of SABRIEL, but I loved it. But I didn’t think anything of it until Stan read my work and told me it was good. Surprisingly good. And he told me to write more.

So I did. I kinda sucked at school (I was always in the ‘slow learners’ math class), but I knew I rocked the hell outta writing. I began writing outside of class--I wrote whenever I had a spare minute. All from that little bit of praise he gave me.

Flash forward six years. I’m a senior in high school (attending a very prestigious Upper East Side school), and I’ve been writing QUEEN OF GLASS for two years. I call myself a writer. I define myself by the books I read and write. I write every day, I send my chapters to friends, I post my work on FictionPress and have, to my surprise, a following. And then I enrolled in a creative writing elective.

My teacher—let’s call her Ms. Edwards—was the polar opposite of Stan. The first day of class, she told us how unlikely it is that we’d ever get published. She complained about how some authors get five and six-figure advances, while she barely got any money for her book. She regaled us with tales of selling copies of her book out of the trunk of her car.

Well, I’d had some shitty teachers before at my Fancy Pants High School, so I wasn’t bothered too much by her pep talk. I even wrote this in my journal on the first day of class: “Creative writing. Okay, Edwards is insane. Like, actually mentally insane. She speaks all crazy and scares me, but it's FUN.” So, I kinda enjoyed creative writing class. Until it was my turn to have my work read.

I submitted what would later become the fist chapter of HADES—a young adult fantasy novel set in an ancient, alternate Greece. I knew it was awesome. While my classmates wrote about doing lines of cocaine in the school bathroom, I imagined an ancient world where the gods were elected to their positions. I was so, so excited to share the chapter with my classmates.

Class rolled around, and before anyone commented on my piece, Ms. Edwards started ranting. Not about my chapter, but about the fantasy genre. How it isn’t a real genre. How it’s all the same, unoriginal story, etc. When I got home that night, I wrote this delightful gem about the experience:

Wasn’t I an absolute delight in high school?

But anyway, that experience with Ms. Edwards was so unpleasant that I swore off creative writing classes forever. Forever and ever. I spent two years in college as a Comparative Literature major, rather than endure another creative writing class. But then I somehow had a change of heart (AKA I found out Comp Lit majors had to take a year of foreign language) and switched to a Creative Writing major.

Turns out, my college creative writing classes were harmless. Kind of a joke, really. But my renewed faith in professors/teachers didn’t occur until I met Professor Janelle Schwartz, who taught comparative literature. Janelle was one of those teachers who asked us to call her by her first name—she wore combat boots to class and sat atop her desk when giving lectures. She also somehow managed to squeeze out of me that I wrote fantasy novels, a secret I kept close-guarded from my professors for fear of another Ms. Edwards freakfest.

When sophomore year ended, she offered to meet with me once a week next term (my junior year) to work on my query letter and help edit QUEEN OF GLASS. I was terrified, but when fall semester rolled around, I found myself in her office. A lot of really crappy stuff happened to me (socially) that year, and Janelle’s office became my safe haven. My meetings with her became the highlight of my week.

And when she read QUEEN OF GLASS and told me it was good—really, really good—and that I would (she had no doubt) be published some day, I believed her. I believed her enough to buy copies of JEFF HERMAN’S GUIDE and WRITER’S MARKET and research agents. I believed her so much that she was one of the first people I emailed when I signed with my agent—and one of the first I emailed after I received my book deal.

I don’t know what would have happened if Stan hadn’t told me that day in 1998 that I was good at writing. I don’t know what would have happened if Janelle hadn’t offered to help me get started with querying. I don’t know what would have happened if they’d acted like Ms. Edwards or Ms. Director HoityToityMFA and trashed the genre I loved. But I just want to say thank you.

Thank you to the teachers who nurture rather than tear down. Thank you to the professors who take time out of their schedules to work on the query letters of clueless students. Thank you for noticing when we stop reading, or when we have a talent for writing, or when we need that push out the door. We might never say it, and we might never see you again, but you should know that you make all the difference.