Writing YA: What IS

I had a miserable adolescence. So much so I took my SATs as a freshman and skipped the last year of high school altogether. I hated every minute of it. I could list the reasons. And so you don't think I was friendless and dateless, I had a hunky boyfriend. I'll consider scanning the prom picture to prove it. If you ignore my hideous dress. It was a slinky peach spaghetti strap number, and I vaguely recall high heels in WHITE. White! The last time either color was on my body, I think.

There were drugs in my high school. The guy next door grew very tall pot plants on the property line between our house and his parents' house. My mom thought they were weeds. A kid hung himself my sophomore year. I saw a girl get slugged by her boyfriend.

But even at that, as I raise four kids, I know things are crazier for them. In my high school, the couples that had sex were a minority--usually people going steady. In high school now, the virgins are very much in the minority. Eating disorders are at a rampant level. Media images bombard young girls--and boys. Drugs are stronger. I knew ONE kid who shot up, and had a boyfriend later who dabbled in heroin. My oldest has known many who have tried it. I knew a handful of girls who had abusive boyfriends, a handful who were raped. The numbers stagger now. Binge drinking. Teen pregnancy. You get the idea.

And the thing is, I write YA. And I feel that it is my responsibility to show the world as it IS. Not as I WANT it to be.

And if I was going to say the biggest mistake I think I see in YA writers trying to break in, it's that difference. I cannot tell you how many times I have encountered writers at a conference who say, "Well, MY book has no premarital sex, no bad language. It's the high school I remember, not what's in the media today. It's not the Gossip Girls."

And that's fine. We don't need ten Gossip Girl series or TV shows. But if you are going to WRITE for this age group, you better have EMPATHY for them. My books are relatively tame, but they are always about outsider girls. "Different." Self-assured. But definitely the different girl. The lonely one. And I cannot tell you . . . every day, EVERY day, I hear from kids. And they tell me things. Some good, some bad. Some make me cry. Some make me laugh. I have a lot of empathy for them.

And in creating that world . . . it is fine if your hero or heroine makes bold choices, makes choices that are the "right" so-called choices. That's fine. But you had better, I feel, address what IS. As a YA writer you cannot, I don't think, create a pretty little world without any semblance of what kids face today because that's what YOU think those kids should be living. It doesn't have to be all grit and ugliness. But you have to at least pull that ostrich head out of the sand and acknowledge.

Every day my kid passes through a metal detector. She's in a top school--a "blue ribbon" school. And it's not near a city. And they've had a handful of suicides--one spectacularly AWFUL one two weeks ago (in the method this young man chose). They've had former students just a year out of school killed in Iraq. They've had multiple lock-downs for vague gun threats.

When you write for YOUR audience, it isn't your high school. Or your parents' high school days. It's today's teens. And you need to respect your audience enough that you give a nod to what is, even if you wish it were otherwise.

Thoughts?

Only You

So much to post, where do I begin. Oh yeah. At the MOST important thing. THE GIANTS WON IN OVERTIME!!!!! All is right with my world today. As an aside, I think it's fairly telling that even though they usually break my heart, I have remained loyal to my Men in Blue all these many years. My heart is bursting today. And in honor of it, Baby Girl and I are going to get our nails done today . . . and she will have the wonderful salon owner, who thinks she's cute as a button, paint her nails blue and white. I will try to post a picture tomorrow. If you think I am shutting up about the Giants until Superbowl . . . well, gang, you just don't know me. I've got two glorious weeks of unadulterated joy to bask in.

Two . . . for those writers participating . . . don't forget to get your butt over to Mary's blog today. Even if you're not participating, you can send us gluttons for punishment a word of encouragement or two. And email her tonight with your page or word count. I have a dinner party tonight, so it's entirely possible my count will be pitiful for the day. We'll see.

Three, a quote about writing from Elie Wiesel:

Write only if you cannot live without writing. Write only what you alone can write.

In March I am giving a presentation on writing for the young adult genre at a conference. And while I happily agreed to do it . . . (and if anyone feels like driving to the Richmond, Virginia area to attend, give a yell) . . . when I start putting my presentation folders together, I am often struck by how inadequate it is to try to explain to people how to write what sells, how to write for a certain genre, etc. Because even though I have a command of the mechanics of it all, even though I have worked as an editor for years, as a writer for years, I am ever aware that the real magic happens when writing calls to you. And the thing that will elevate your writing is that story that ONLY YOU can write. It will never be about seeing what's hot in the marketplace and then writing that story. It will always be about writing YOUR story, informed by your life and experiences and passions and interests.

I once mentored a writer who wrote a phenomenal book about a detective, but we all know that's tough to sell. I believed in him, this writer, but I also knew the detective hadn't quite gelled. I couldn't really come up with anything that I, as reader, could say to someone if I was to describe the detective other than "family man, really smart." And THAT isn't going to sell. The plot was great . . . and I genuinely liked the detective, but there was a "so what" editorially.

So the writer started adding quirks. He toyed with the detective being a gambling addict. A recovering alcoholic. X or y. And in the end, I didn't think it much mattered because the writer was tacking traits on instead of somehow digging really, really deep and finding something that ONLY he could write.

When you start tweaking tics . . . start tweaking nuance, I usually feel you are dooming a book. The specialness has to come blazing out of the gate with a roar. The story only you can tell. I can't teach that.

Thoughts? Do you write from that place? The story only you can tell?

Possibility

I had the most wonderful lesson on writing courtesy of Baby Girl tonight. She is a character in my new trilogy, and she read four chapters, found a typo (a future editor!), and was overall delighted by the book and can't wait to read more. But she taught me the wonder of children and writing YA, the wonder of books.

You see, I need to add a trait or two to the descriptor for her character. A familial trait in the book are pale eyes, but she needs something more to distinguish her. I suggested flecks of violet in her eyes. But she wanted a tattoo since birth on the palm of her hand.

"What? Who would give their kid a tattoo?" (Asks me . . . the ever-vigilant mother.)

"Here," she pointed. "A tiger's eye in the palm of her hand." (Her character has a familiar, a tiger, who protects her.)

"A tattoo?"

"More like a birthmark. Something she was born with."

"A tiger's eye?"

"Yeah."

Case closed.

And there it is. Baby Girl doesn't need logic, she doesn't need to explain it. The character would simply would be born with it. Just as Baby Girl didn't ask HOW it was her character has a Siberian white tiger obeying her every command. She doesn't ask HOW she can sleep with a tiger without getting eaten. It simply is.

Children do not wonder how, so much as accept the realm of possibility and fantasy. They live in a world where things simply are, just as they think the world is fair. Eventually, they learn it isn't, but for a time, the world can be a fair place. For a time, being a good person can be enough. Wishes can come true. Magic is real. Fairies can be real. So can Santa.

We could all use a dose of possibility. Dream it. Don't ask how. Just know it's possible. Maybe that's why I became a writer after all. I never wanted to grow up. And you?