note to self

Finishing books is important, but what *really* matters is seeing your book in the hands of young readers. Yesterday I met some impressive young women at Howard University’s Upward Bound program. They were reading A Wish After Midnight and at least one teen was ready for the sequel—she slipped this note to the program coordinator and he shared it with me. Several others made a short film in which they shared their wishes for themselves and their community; you can check it out here. I haven’t written much lately but will try to make a push to finish Dragons in a Bag this weekend. One of the young women at Howard asked me whether I felt satisfied once I finished writing Wish since I wrote it partly in response to the lack of #BlackGirlMagic books in my own childhood. And I told her the truth: there will never be enough books to make up for what I missed when I was her age. Maybe that’s why I never seem to run out of ideas…and why it feels so urgent to finish my own books and get Black girls writing their own stories, too. On Monday I head to the Center for Fiction to work with another group of teenage girls who have read Wish. We’ll have time for a writing workshop and hopefully they’ll have more questions that help me remember why I do what I do.