Margaret Willey

January comes after a scattered and distracted December during which I wrote little and basically let go of my writing life, sending it away. Now I reel it back in, post holiday, post family gatherings and it returns easily, without urgency, more like a patient friend. I feel like I always post a love song to January, my time of reclamation and solitude and cold mornings and a clean focus. I will finish my essays now. I will work on a new novel. I will help my husband with his wonderful project. Perhaps I will write a few winter poems. There is time, there is anonymity, there is silence. All is well. Happy New Year.  Read More 

I have a few writer friends who say they don't read their reviews. Others who say they don't care about reviews and are not affected by them. I wish that I could adopt one of these two strategies. I must admit, the wait for my first review of Beetle Boy was stressful. I am not a stranger to critical reviews, even a few that I would characterize as brutal reviews--and these, I believe have strengthened my belief in the integrity of my own books. They are not for everyone. They are distinct and uniquely mine. This is certainly true of Beetle Boy. I don't think I have ever been so proud of a book--so sure that it is coming straight from my heart and my brain and my beliefs about what happens to children when their parents abandon and/or use them. But the book is a strong dose, full of harsh realities and human failure and may be problematic for some. So like I said...waiting for that first review...very hard. Now it has come and the matter is settled. I am very glad that it was a starred review, but beyond that, I am over the hurdle of the wait for the "first review," and so feel very free about what will come next. Let it roll. I believe in my book. No one else could have written it.  Read More 

I have posted a PDF of my Guest Column in the Fall 2013 ALAN Review on both the home page and the FOUR SECRETS page of my website. The essay traces the long and winding road that eventually led me to an illustrated novel for middle grade readers (a crime novel, some have said). It includes my own experience as the mother of a daughter who was bullied in high school and who didn't tell me what was happening (something awful) for a very long time.

"Why are they doing this to me, Mom. Is there something wrong with me?"

Proud of this essay & realizing that it feels in some ways like a goodbye to the process of writing FOUR SECRETS as I move into the territory of a different sort of bullying, the parental kind, and a very different novel. Beetles are coming. Read More 

Back when I published my first novel--an event which has been on my mind, perhaps because my daughter is now the age I was when I had her and when my first novel was published--it was completely unnecessary to do the sort of self-promotion and self-generated publicity that is now an integral part of the profession. In fact, there was a supposition that my job was to WRITE, a private and solitary act, and that all of the other aspects of having a book published were assigned to the experts--my first editor, Laura Geringer; my first publicist, Bill Morris, my first agent, whose name escapes me. I did nothing, NOTHING, to promote, or sell, or publicize my own books, and nothing was expected of me. My work was sent out into the wide world by others and everything was carefully filtered for me, filtered and fluffed, so that nothing would discourage or confuse me--the new writer, she-who-must-be-protected, exposed to the marketplace gently.

How lucky I was, to have published at all during that era, certainly an easier time for writers who are shy and love their privacy. I never even made a phone call on my own behalf--I just waited for others to promote me, knowing that the rewards of writing a good book would come. And rewards did come--strong sales, invitations to speak, citations and awards--all without any effort from me beyond doing my best to write the books I was meant to write.

Well...I have just spent the past month, getting my book and my name out, out, out into the marketplace, with the invaluable help of a seasoned publicist, but I am experiencing up close and personal, the changing role of the writer in our overly-interconnected world where buzz and speed and promotion is everything! Read More 

More nostalgia. The jacket flap photo from my first novel. My daughter had just been born. Now she is expecting her first child, a girl. Beloved daughter. Expectant and full of new life and the same age I was when I had her. The baby will be named Beatrice, after Chloe's grandmother. And she will be very, very clever.  Read More 

Today I realized something that brought a smile to my face. The very first novel I ever wrote, way back in the eighties, THE BIGGER BOOK OF LYDIA, had a crucial journal in it, a survival manifesto. Lydia's journal was about not fading away, not disappearing. In FOUR SECRETS, Renata also has a journal and it helps her to survive in Juvie. They are both artists and they both survive the trauma of their situations via their precious journals. It felt like a kind of full circle, an accidental one. I felt happy about this coincidence all day.

And also a little nostalgic for the early days of my chosen profession, before the internet, a time of innocence, a time of confidence.  Read More 

Here are various topics that I have been sketching essays for: 10 Things You Didn't Know about Juvenile Detention, The Bullied Child as Hero, Bullies in Classic Literature about Growing Up, and Facing Up to your Inner Bully. This last one is based on my belief that we all engage in bullying behavior sometimes in the process of becoming adults and learning compassion. What's scary is how rarely adults reflect on their own guilt and cowardice when faced with the subject of bullying. Everybody has tough school memories: being bullied, observing bullying, ignoring routine cruelty, refusing to intervene out of apathy or fear. All stuff I am so interested in. Great summer project, along with writing autobiographical essays on the theme of various fairy tales that comforted me and freaked me out as a child.  Read More 

To ease myself into a new project, I am tinkering with autobiographical essays that were in various states of incompletion--several just needing a solid conclusion, but conclusions are very hard for me. Finished one essay yesterday about loving the book HANS BRINKER by Mary Mapes Dodge when I was a young reader, using the  Read More 

What is there to say when you are writing the way I have been writing? There is no way to make it interesting--it is solitary, introspective, internal; it moves underneath ordinary life. All I can say about my work this month is that sentences are becoming paragraphs. Paragraphs are becoming pages. I am grateful  Read More 

Currently I am awaiting the galleys for FOUR SECRETS, also awaiting a response to my novel THE BEETLE BOY and working steadily on the short stories that will comprise the novel HOW SHE LEFT. January is proving to be a month during which I can write every day, even it it is only for  Read More