Cross-posted to The Midnight Hour
The trouble with each Friday post isn't finding something to write about, it's more choosing among the plethora of things to say about writing.
This week, for example, there's three things I'm thinking about, each of which deserves a big long post of its own. However, I'm in an abundant mood (and all my brain cycles are taken up with finishing the rough draft of the YA, which is two scenes away from being a Whole Corpse Ready For Surgery) so I'll just touch on each of them. Besides, everyone's at RT this weekend anyway, so bite-size pieces are probably better.
First, I'm thinking about the prevailing cultural perception that artists aren't supposed to care about money. This was spurred by two things: the recently-released rant by Harlan Ellison (warning: strong language and yelling, NSFW) and a friend's angst over a film company that basically treats artists like trash.
I agree very strongly with the point of Ellison's rant. Why are writers not supposed to get paid for their work? Don't we have to eat too? I'm not saying that an artist must automatically get paid just for being Artistic, mind you. I am saying instead that we need to treat ourselves like professionals first, which will make it easier to insist other people treat us like professionals. (Especially the people buying our products/services.) The whole idea that money is dirty and art is pure only benefits the people who don't want to pay a decent rate for decent art. As Bukowski (that misogynistic jerk, but oh he could write) often pointed out, starvation doesn't make for better writers.
It just makes for starvation.
Moving on...if you were offended by last Friday's post, skip down to the third thing. Okay? You've been warned.
Second, I've had a run-in recently with a "writer" who claimed not to read because it might "affect" their voice. Once I picked my jaw back up off the floor and hurried away (fearing I might start to drop the F-bomb at high volume) I thought about how ridiculous this is. Reading is part of a writer's toolbox. I agree with Stephen King (again, I think On Writing is one of the very few writing books worth buying) that reading is essential to teach you several indefinable things about writing. Like pacing. Tone. Voice. What works and what doesn't. Just like an engineer or a wood carver will look at finished pieces of work to see how problems were solved, so a writer must read to gain that sense of strategies for solving problems on the page.
Writing without being a reader is like being a tone-deaf musician, or like being a blind painter. It's not that tone-deaf people can't enjoy music or blind people can't enjoy the feel of paint, but there's an essential component not being taken into consideration here.
Sure, your "voice" is going to change if you read something spectacularly good. That's part of the creative process, and to be encouraged. Don't worry about "your" voice coming through. That'll happen pretty definitely. You're the filter the Universe is pouring this stuff through; it will take on your voice as a matter of course. Your job is reading enough so you know what your voice is.
And now, last but not least.
Third, I wanted to ask a question. I know we have a lot of YA authors here in the community. What's your opinion on adult themes in YA literature? Things like sex, obscenity, suicide, etc?
Two of the best YA books I ever read were Sarah Dessen's Dreamland and Andrea Siegel's Like The Red Panda. The former deals with teen dating violence and the latter deals with suicide.
Both these books have what I call "the low-bullsh!t factor". Raising kids has given me a healthy respect for their BS-meters. Kids and teens know when you're being false and putting one over on them. Just because they're powerless to protest in some cases doesn't mean they don't know. I find myself now, while writing a YA, wondering how far I can say "I would not be responsible if I approached this subject this way" or "This isn't an appropriate subject to talk about."
Because teens do talk about inappropriate things. Their lives have the same pitfalls and dangers adult lives do, with the added soupcon of hormones and inexperience to make the danger greater. How do other YA writers deal with this? Would you write about a "taboo" subject if you felt strongly enough that it fit the story and should be discussed? Do you think YA books do a good job of approaching real-life concerns for teens? Should teens be "protected" in fiction or does the YA writer have a responsibility to "tell it like it is"?
I realize the line here between what a YA writer should/shouldn't write about is going to be thin, and it's going to be different for each writer. I just want to know what people are thinking about this. I've had a few conversations with my resident Teen about this, and he tends to be on the side of, "I wish adults would quit telling me what to think and write about what happens to me every day. Because, you know, kids are confused."
So what do you think?
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thoughtful
April 18 2008, 19:47:31 UTC 4 years ago
A searing account of the protagonist's suicidal depression and repeated attempts to kill herself may be appropriate for an adult novel but not for YA; a candid treatment of a teenager's suicidal impulses may be appropriate for a 15-year-old reader but not for an 11-year-old one. And then there's a story like mine in which one character tries to commit suicide, but it's not heavily dwelt upon or the main focus of the story, so 11-year-olds can read it. Same subject, different handling, different readerships.
April 18 2008, 20:04:54 UTC 4 years ago
Because really, when you whittle down those fraught topics, sex, violence, and death are really about human relationships. The good, the bad, and the ugly. How human interaction can lead to, away from, and be intricately involved with each of those themes. I think there is a fine line between "protection" or "idealisation" and "telling it like it is." I think a writer has responsibility to both. This is across all age levels. If I wanted absolute realism I'd read nonfiction.
I think it's really how the subject is dealt with the most important. Taste and what one considers appropriate is such a subjective thing, but I do think that if a SCENE dealing with those themes is there merely for shock factor and doesn't qualitatively add to the STORY itself, then I'm disgusted. Not with the inclusion of those topics in my YA but with the crassness of the writer to write about them so cheaply.
April 18 2008, 21:18:18 UTC 4 years ago
Which I guess is my dividing line: if the subject is relevant to at least some teens, it's appropriate for a YA. If it's not (say, a story about a midlife crisis from an adult point of view), then it's not.
But the number of inappropriate topics left by that definition is pretty low. :-)
Mostly I feel like teens are just entitled to good stories of all sorts, same as adults.
April 18 2008, 21:56:39 UTC 4 years ago
April 18 2008, 23:04:12 UTC 4 years ago
Kids do have a pretty good BS meter if they know about the subject. However, part of the balancing act of YA lit is that there are kids who know and kids who really don't. I have students who are practically as innocent as the day they were born and students who have as much knowledge as an experienced adult. Some of them are having sex (straight up or oral) some of them are not. Some of them are using drugs, some are not. Some swear, some don't. Often one of the things they have in common, however, is that in order for them to really get something, that thing needs to be overtly presented, but in a sneaky way so that they don't go "Oh, just adults blabbing again."
The books my students really talk about mostly deeply, either in English class, or among themselves, and often the ones they tell me about (they have questions that make my head hurt, OMG), contain both the messier reality of sex, drugs, swearing, trauma and the adult message of caution. And if the message of caution isn't given anywhere and no balance view is presented, they will assume the unbalanced view is true if it is "cool" and then you'll get the innocent kids thinking they should strike out in directions they aren't ready for yet and not-so-innocents feeling justified and reinforced in their risky behaviors.
However, most kids have a friend with sense or have been the friend with sense, so the appearance of a friend who gives the adult message (in a teenish way) to the hero/ine of a book feels natural to them, as does a flashback to something a trusted adult might have said, or a memory about someone else who did thus and so and paid the consequences. Most kids have also made bad decisions and suffered consequences or know someone close to them who has so those situations feel "real" to them. The "responsible" part of the subject can be presented so that the kids get the message without then automatically rejecting it. It can, if done correctly, really get them to think about and talk about the subject far more than if only the messier or only the cleaned up story had been present.
So, after that longwinded and not totally coherent speech: My opinion is that books that deal with the tough subjects are valuable for teens to read but they need to be balanced. Too much "cool" will rot their brains and give them really incorrect ideas, and too much preachy innocence will bore them and shut their brains off, but a middle road will make them think.
April 18 2008, 23:30:12 UTC 4 years ago
That middle thing...
I've been hearing that more and more, about putting down other novels when you go to write your own. I understand the point but agree with you. I enjoy seeing how other authors go about detailing certain things mundane or fantastical. I love reading dialogue tags and scene transitions, mostly because I still feel like I'm sinking instead of swimming when I write. By looking over other work I can meter my own, gauging if I'm rambling on about crap details or if it feels as smooth as published work.It also helps relieve the old brain cramps when I dive into a book related or totally off the subject I'm currently scribbling about. Ooo, brain cramps are the worst.
April 19 2008, 01:02:34 UTC 4 years ago
My YA books tend to range from PG to PG-13- not because I'm censoring myself at all, but because if they gave out ratings like that to people, I'd probably be rated PG or PG-13 myself. I wrote my first published YA book when I was 19, so it never occurred to me to wonder if writing a "clean" book might compromise the authenticity of what I was writing, because what I wrote was very true to my life up to the point I started writing the book. Now, five years and several books down the road, I still tend to write as if I'm writing for myself- I think teens are MUCH smarter than most people give them credit for and that if an author thinks too much about the fact that they're "writing for teens," as opposed to the fact that they're writing for PEOPLE, their writing could easily suffer for it.
Just my two cents.
-Jen
April 19 2008, 01:09:36 UTC 4 years ago
I dooooon't really know how feasible that is with writing though :S
And the second subject: What. You know, my writing still only had the consistency of dribble (as magnificent as I was convinced it was at the time XD) when I first heard the 'If you don't have time to read, you don't have time to write' mantra, and I still hold to it to this day. Even more reinforced now than before, to be honest. You see, I hadn't read a new book in a long time when it wound down to the end of last year (very poor of me to make excuses, but $30+ in library fees & utterly no dollars to buy new books was taking a toll) and I fell into the most unimaginably long bout of writer's block, ever.
It was EPIC writer's block.
But then I went out and picked up a new book (Temeraire/His Majesty's Dragon for the curious) and within a day the block was gone.
And then I came to the realisation that if I wasn't reading, I wasn't inspired to write either. Or, what I was writing was very poor or of borderline quality. But I've never been affected by the voices of other authors, so I'm afraid I can't comprehend that writer's argument that it compromises your own voice, if you're well-settled in it. If that makes sense at all.
On the third point, I think others have already said everything better than myself :)
April 19 2008, 01:45:51 UTC 4 years ago
I can't imagine not reading anymore in my genre because I was writing, although I too have heard someone give that advice. I shook my head at that sentiment and moved on. But I also can't fathom those people in our society that don't read books period. Books have been in my life since the day I was born, and cutting them off would be like cutting off a limb.
Anonymous
April 19 2008, 05:25:26 UTC 4 years ago
For instance--sex. Some teens have sex and I don't think it is irresponsible to include them in my novel. However, if my character has sex, she is going to explore the consequences from her POV. I'm not out to write an Afterschool Special--but sex changes things and not always for the better. It is an awesome opportunity for character growth, ya know?
Also, I'm kind of against onscreen sex in a YA. But that is my preference. Gwen Hayes
Anonymous
April 19 2008, 21:13:26 UTC 4 years ago
#1
After the first twenty years, the starving artist bit gets a little thin, or as Will Rogers put it, "When the checks stop comin' in, the humor tends ter wane."April 25 2008, 18:51:03 UTC 4 years ago