{"id":1961,"date":"2012-05-04T09:18:10","date_gmt":"2012-05-04T13:18:10","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.megancrewe.com\/blog\/?p=1961"},"modified":"2012-05-05T15:22:08","modified_gmt":"2012-05-05T19:22:08","slug":"the-ways-we-struggle-kirstin-cronn-mills","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.megancrewe.com\/blog\/2012\/05\/04\/the-ways-we-struggle-kirstin-cronn-mills\/","title":{"rendered":"The Ways We Struggle – Kirstin Cronn-Mills"},"content":{"rendered":"

Click here for an explanation of the The Ways We Struggle guest post series<\/a>.<\/p>\n

I’m joined this week by Kirstin Cronn-Mills<\/a>, author of the contemporary YA novels The Sky Always Hears Me<\/i><\/a> and (coming in October) Beautiful Music for Ugly Children<\/i><\/a>. Kirstin is a self-proclaimed word nerd. She lives in southern Minnesota, where she writes a lot, reads as much as she can, teaches at a two-year college (she won the Minnesota State College Student Association 2009 Instructor of the Year award), and goofs around with her son, Shae, and her husband, Dan. Today she talks about taming her Inner Bully.<\/p>\n

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My Worst Bully by Kirstin Cronn-Mills<\/font><\/center><\/p>\n

The anthology Dear Bully<\/i> has gotten a lot of press in the last year\u2014as it should!\u2014because the authors who wrote it are speaking back to their bullies. Bullies hate that, you know. I have a bully in my life, and it\u2019s taken me years and years to speak back to her. What\u2019s her name? Kirstin, but I call her The Bad Voice, or TBV. She can\u2019t physically hit me, but her words are a punch to my gut every time she opens her mouth. <\/p>\n

TBV has kept me company for years. Way back when I was a kid, TBV heard the questions I kept asking myself: what\u2019s wrong with me? Do my parents care about me? Why don\u2019t other kids want to play with me?<\/i> Nerdy smart kids don\u2019t mix well with small towns, so my self-confidence wasn\u2019t great to begin with. Since nobody was answering, TBV decided to speak up: everything is wrong with you, of course. No, your parents don\u2019t care about you. Other kids don\u2019t want to play with you because you\u2019re awful.<\/i><\/p>\n

By the time I was a grown-up, TBV was constantly chattering in my ear. Should I be an English major? What can you do with an English major? You can\u2019t be trusted to figure out your future.<\/i> Is he the right guy for me? You\u2019re too dumb to figure that out. And guys don\u2019t like nerdy English majors\u2014especially ugly ones.<\/i><\/p>\n

You can imagine how Inner Bully reacts to the world of publishing. You\u2019re too stupid to be a writer! You\u2019re writing the wrong thing\u2014nobody reads edgy contemporary YA. Teenagers hate you! Can\u2019t you tell? That editor hates you. Librarians can\u2019t stand you, either.<\/i> It\u2019s possible what she says is true, at least for some people. Who knows? But now I know TBV lies\u2014bullies are great liars. And I\u2019m not friends with liars.<\/p>\n

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Most days (though not all of them) I\u2019m wise enough to know the little girl who thought she was awful is now a woman who understands she\u2019s just fine. I may never win an award or make enough money to quit my day job, but I like my books, and other people like them too. I\u2019ll keep writing, because you never know what could happen. My best-seller could be right around the corner! If I quit writing, I\u2019ll never find out. <\/p>\n

Now, when The Bad Voice starts yelling, I offer her chamomile-pear tear while I listen. Then I whisper some soothing words, give her a hug, and send her to a dark corner of my mind. Then I go back to my story. I was silly to trust her for so many years, but she was talking about important stuff, so I thought I had to listen. Then somehow I realized I could listen to my heart instead. That sounds so corny! But I don\u2019t know what else to call the Good Voice. Yes, my parents cared about me. Being smart is a good thing. I\u2019m not ugly. I make good decisions. I can figure out my future.<\/i><\/p>\n

Flesh-and-blood bullies are bad\u2014no question\u2014but inner enemies can be just as awful. I\u2019m sure I\u2019m not the only one who lives with The Bad Voice. I just hope other people can send theirs away sooner than I could. Life is so much better without her.<\/p>\n

View all the The Ways We Struggle posts so far<\/a>.<\/b><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Click here for an explanation of the The Ways We Struggle guest post series. I’m joined this week by Kirstin Cronn-Mills, author of the contemporary YA novels The Sky Always Hears Me and (coming in October) Beautiful Music for Ugly … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[14],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.megancrewe.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1961"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.megancrewe.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.megancrewe.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.megancrewe.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.megancrewe.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1961"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"http:\/\/www.megancrewe.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1961\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1968,"href":"http:\/\/www.megancrewe.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1961\/revisions\/1968"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.megancrewe.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1961"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.megancrewe.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1961"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.megancrewe.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1961"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}