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Looking Back on CWIM: The 1998 Edition
In which I Interview Judy Blume and edit Richard Peck...

There were some intimidating moments as I worked on the 1998 CWIM. First Richard Peck agreed to write a feature for me Looking at YA Past & Present (which he composed on a typewriter just as he did his novels) and I went through revisions with him. It was my fifth edition of CWIM, I was still in my twenties, and I feeling a little like a baby editor.

But that was nothing compared to interviewing the woman who arguably had more influence on my childhood than anyone else: Judy Blume.

I met Judy at an SCBWI conference autograph party to which I arrived ridiculously early so I could be at the front of her line. As I said in my article intro, after she told me she was open to doing an interview, "I ran up to my hotel room and called my husband, my mom, my sister and a few of my girlfriends to tell them I talked to Judy Blume and somehow managed not to wet my pants." (After the book came out and Judy got her copy, she sent me a letter thanking me for the interview. It said "I'm so glad you didn't wet your pants," which she underlined in the purple pen she used to sign her name. I framed the letter and hung it next to my bookcase.)

Here is part of our conversation from the 1998 CWIM in which we talked about teen sex, birth control, my chubby childhood, and masturbation, among other things:

What's your advice for writer who are tackling [controversial subjects]?

For me the best thing is to not even know there's a problem, and to write from the place deep inside, where you're not thinking about anything but telling the best story you can tell. And if it becomes an issue, deal with it afterwards. One of the great fears, with this climate of censorship we have today, is that writers will censor themselves and the losers will be the kids. Writers are hungry. They want to be published. If they think they can't be published by writing about something, then maybe they won't write about it.

The '70s was a very writer- and kid-friendly time because there was less fear in the marketplace and more concern about publishing the best books and getting them to the kids, books kids could really relate to. All publishing has changed drastically in the last couple of years. The whole marketplace--everything has changed. That's a topic I'm probably not even qualified to talk about, but it's become much more like the movie business--it's driven by the bottom line. It's all economics, the way things are marketed now. So if you just look at children's publishing--has it changed? Yes. Is there more fear now in publishing? I don't know. There was, but maybe now people are sick of pandering to the censors.

If you would have begun writing in, say, 1995 instead of the late '60s, do you think it would have been more difficult for you to get your work published?