Details, Details

Do you remember this? The swing when you could swing alone? The feeling of power and soar? The bird that came to you because it understood your admiration, your way of trying to be just like it was? Do you remember?

I sang on the swing when I was a kid—Bob Dylan and My Fair Lady. I pumped higher than I'd been taught to, and one day, on the highest arc I'd ever achieved, the chains snapped and the plank that I was sitting on flew out over the yard. When it came down my arm was shattered and it would never be the same, and so that one moment changed everything for me—there wouldn't be gym class until 9th grade, there wouldn't be team sports, there'd always be this brace when I skated—my sequined dresses, my funky arm.

When I saw this boy at the beach last Saturday, I did this thing I do—project myself back then arc me forward, imagining one small detail changed, chains, in this case, that never snapped. But it is the single detail that often does define a life, and in my case who knows if I'd have been a loner writer if I'd been able to play team sports, or had I not been sent to the library all those years in lieu of gym.

The single detail. I try to pay attention to these in my fiction, because I have learned what the single detail does to real life.

On another note: I have been blessed this past week by the goodness of others who have taken the time to read my books and to put down some thoughts about them. I'm not entirely sure these good people can ever know just what this means to me. But today may I thank one of those incredible bloggers out there, aquafortis, at the collaborative YA bookspace, Finding Wonderland, for these words about House of Dance.