A few weeks ago, young theater student Lauren Collins Peterson seemed to drop out of sight after doing only a few of the "YouTube" installments she promised to do -- acting out Hope Shay, the main character in 'Now You See Her,' my first young adult novel.

My phone calls went unanswered. My e-mails went unanswered except for breezy comments about vlogs (video blogs) that never materialized.

After a while, I found all the comments hinky -- the Internet failed; the friend who was going to upload the videos didn't; Lauren ran out of time...

What I forgot was that being 19 is different from being a focused and driven adult -- and Lauren is more professional and focused than most. I remembered my own college health and nutrition class, during which my aunt (already deceased) did me the favor of dying an additional two times so that I could have more time to finish my paper on the role of sports in a healthy lifestyle.

And I let Lauren down (when I was mad and though I'd never see her again) by bringing up personal things (I'm not going to restate them) that, entirely inadvertently, were spread around.

Bottom line: Lauren is a major talent and a good human being. While I'm not sure from day to day if her schedule (which is breakneck) will allow her to finish this project, I hope it will. It's broken new ground; and she's done work that went far above and beyond the nominal fee I paid her and more than I expected.

In any case, I learn this lesson again and again.

When human beings and their emotions are at stake, what we write down is at peril of our reputations not just as writers but as people -- and must be undertaken only with the utmost care.

Lauren may be playing a fictional character; but she is not one.

Often, when I've adapted a situation from real life in fiction, I hurt people -- whether or not the situation actually was adapted from the life of the individual who was hurt.

It never was intentional; but in the end, that doesn't matter.

What matters is that the taste remains in my mouth, an aspirin not quite dissolved, that doesn't heal the pain.

Lauren let me down. But I let her have it. Neither thing was right; but I'm the grown person here. I should have, as they say, been more discreet. I cared too much about this project and let it matter more than it should have.

yours,

Jackie M.