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The Unspoken Ageism in YA

Today, I ran across an article by written by the New York Daily that said that in order to sell YA books you need to write about threesomes. Because I don’t want to generate site traffic for them, here’s a safe link: http://www.donotlink.com/gaus

Not only was that article biphobic, written by someone who didn’t know the first thing about YA and also didn’t know how to honestly quote authors, but it was also incredibly ageist.

There is ageism in the YA community. It’s not talked about often, but it should be. There, of course, is ageism against YA, too, but today I’m going to talk about the ageism that occurs when teens decide to read and write Young Adult fiction. I just want to throw a disclaimer out there that this is not an attack against any YA adult writer or reader. I love how YA is a wonderful reading experience for every age group. I love that adults read YA and stay active in the YA community. The YA community has been thoughtful, sensitive, and engaging in many social issues, and some of the books themselves are incredibly relatable. But the ageism and the way some people conduct themselves has gotten to a point where teen readers I know, including myself, are not sure if we even belong in the YA community or not, and it’s ridiculous to think that teen readers feel so distanced from the books that portray teenagers. I’ve talked to teen readers, and some of us have concluded that, frankly, sometimes we don’t see ourselves in YA anymore.

Don’t know what ageism in YA is? It’s:

-When adult school boards decide what Young Adult books teens should be denied to read, and teens don’t get a say in it.

-When I’m in a room at a conference and there’s a panel of adults instructing YA writers how to “write YA”, but I know they’re thinking of how to write for YA trends and how to write for the industry because there is not a single mention of what teen readers want to see on shelves. And I, a teenage YA writer who does not identify with anything that's being said, shrink behind my conference badge. Because the adults Must Be Right.

-When several YA authors try to deny and shame a teenage reader’s sense of discomfort regarding an author.

-When teens I go to school with and the friends I have care about grades and AP scores and tenuous friendships. They cry about family troubles and college apps and fear for unknown futures and unknown careers. But many protagonists in YA, incidentally, just overwhelmingly care about kissing that hot person. (Relationships are major, but they're not the only thing teens think about.)

-When adults write articles saying that all teens want are threesomes, and out of all the woefully misquoted people in there (who may or may not share the same opinion as him), none of them are a) YA readers or b) the very teenagers who open YA books in an attempt to see some of themselves in the author’s words. I think Kate Brauning tweeted the other day that teens shouldn’t be grouped and written about in a single narrative or manner, because teenagers are diverse. And it’s absolutely true. It’s infuriating when adults decide how teens should be collectively be portrayed in books. When they arrive on a consensus on How All Teens Should Act And Do, they inadvertently co-opt our voices, and tell US what we should read and what we should write. There is no dialogue. And that should change.

We are not your perfect high school fantasies. We are not your constantly witty, gorgeous, and sexually confident characters. We come from all races and from every type of social situation. We develop all kinds of identities of sex and gender. We can love boldly or hesitantly, or not at all. There is no one “right” way to write YA. The next time you write about teenagers, listen to us. Respect us. And please, please don’t try to speak for us without considering our voices.

And Allen Salkin, the next time you decide to write about “What YA Readers Want”, maybe you should consider also including a teenage reader to purposefully misquote as well. And for your information, New York Daily News, I’m a Young Adult reader, a young adult, and I’ll still like a book even if there isn’t a threesome in it.

#ageisminya

elizabethgwenn

merryfates

Merry Fates On “Write What You Know”

The following is an excerpt from our upcoming book The Anatomy of Curiosity.

Tessa:

I rejected this advice completely when I was a young writer, partly because it was everywhere and I am a contrary being, but mostly because it made no sense. My favorite books were all about dragons and fairies and witches, so unless the authors lived in way cooler places than me, they were not writing what they knew, either. But as I grew and practiced and learned better how to write stories readers connected with, I came back around to “write what you know” from a less rigid, youthful, literal perspective. Now, I think that despite it maybe being the most misunderstood piece of writing advice, it might also be the truest.

I don’t think it’s about what your brain knows, it’s about what your heart knows.

Write the story only you can tell because of your unique experiences and your unique dreams and your unique perspective regarding the human condition. Isn’t that what all stories are about in the end: us, our world, our dreams? What do you bring to this story? Write that. What does your understanding of how people interact and what people need and how people are good or terrible or impossible bring? That is what you know. Write that. Write it with true stories or war stories or stories that are entirely lies or stories about dragons. Go out and have adventures, meet people, learn new skills and new stories, then bring them home and reinvent them in your dreams and write that.

Brenna:

I do not actually remember the first time I heard this— write what you know. I heard it a lot though, starting at about the same time I started actively searching for writing advice.

It can be a difficult rule to feel good about, especially when you’re still pretty new to writing. I alternated between being intimidated by it and annoyed by it, because for a long time, I thought I didn’t know anything. Instead, when I looked in all the various spaces of my brain where knowing goes, it seemed like I just had a lot of ideas about stuff. And if that was true—if I only had untested thoughts and if it was also true that I actually needed to know something first—how was I going to be able to write?

I decided, with possibly less trepidation than you’d think, that I would opt not to listen. In fact, I would only write about things I knew nothing about! Characters the exact opposite of me! Worlds that not only didn’t, but couldn’t exist!

Also, as it may have occurred to you by now, I was grossly misunderstanding the underlying purpose of the message. People who tell you to write what you know are not saying (at least, I don’t think they’re saying—individual results may vary) that you can only ever write about things that have personally happened to you. They’re really saying, hey, figure out your characters and your story-world, figure out the emotions that make someone act a certain way or choose a certain path. Understand. Don’t just throw something in there because it seems shallowly self-evident, or it makes the rest of the story easier to write. Empathize. Don’t just assume you know enough about something, go learn more. The thing is, sometimes we know things because they happened to us, but sometimes (more times, even?) we know things because we made an actual effort to understand them.

Maggie:

“Write what you know” was the most discouraging advice I heard when I was a fourteen-year-old aspiring writer stuck in the middle of nowhere Virginia. I knew a lot about being an animal-crazy bagpipe-playing girl, but that wasn’t what I wanted to write about. I wanted to write thrillers and fantasies and novels set in places that weren’t my home and all about people who weren’t me. I wanted to travel with my fiction. “Write what you know.” What did I know about car chases in 1960s Belfast? Nothing, probably.

But “write what you know” isn’t really about facts. It’s about truth, which is a different thing altogether. “Write what you know” is a bit of advice that is meant to make sure you write as true a story as you can. So that means an isolated country girl could write a compelling story about a person stranded on a moon camp, because that girl would know very well how to write the truth of isolation. A girl with a lot of siblings could write a story about a rock band, because that girl would know the truth of navigating relationships with a lot of people who know you too well. A girl who practiced her bagpipes for four hours a day could write about a girl training to be an Olympic gymnast, because she would know how it felt to sacrifice time to get good at a skill few people understood.

You can research facts. It’s much harder to research emotional truths. “Write what you know” means write the emotional dynamics that you’ve experienced. Write the emotional dynamics that are specific to you. Write something true.

Tessa said writers should have adventures, and I agree. Not to learn facts, but to have as many emotional experiences as you can, so that you can steal them and stuff them in your books. “Write what you know” shouldn’t stop you in your tracks. You know enough now.

Get to work

From now until our new book The Anatomy of Curiosity comes out in October we’ll be posting short stories Monday-Saturday at merryfates.tumblr.com! Join us, beginning Monday, July 6th.

4kingdoms

cliwrites-blog

everything about this is goals

benchandcompass

deltaliteraryjournal

We all wanted that high school sweetheart We wanted to be young and white in the fifties with meatloafs and sock hops and lawns so perfect they looked like Clark Gable was kissing them We wanted to be thirteen and alive and meet a girl that was thirteen and alive and walk with her past the grandstands to sit and hold hands with to sit and kiss with to sit and sit with like it was something that you’d have missed but that never was We once wanted to be poor but not too poor connecting this country like Kerouac and thumbs pulling small town waitresses in the back seats and trailer park homes where the two of you would find passion expanding between the locking of your bones until morning would come to find you out on the road with your pockets empty except for your hands but your hands they’d be overflowing with your soul but that’s not what happened We once went to bed like between the bed sheets were the valley where dinosaurs still breathed and how we would capture these triceratops and brontosauruses but even he was opened up with the smoke that rose out of the homes and the corners that we once climbed through, with the streets and the footballs which we once threw, the school desks upon which we once drew, the windows that sat open through we once flew, before the outside world of parking spaces and dead friends came flooding on in and we forgot what we wanted and we became what we become: waitresses and bartenders, city employees and temp positions, we are junkies and one kiss poems and we cry the stars as we write our scars onto dumpsters and electric boxes because the only thing that we can hear is our hearts and the only ones listening are the streets to the blood that breathes through the letters we leave and we dream that we try to rise ourselves up out of these burning buildings but instead get buried somewhere beneath because I know my life is like some high school kid’s notebook that kid that shuffles back and forth between school and home stacking the letters and the pictures too close for anyone outside of his own imagination to read because it’s through the ink that his heart beats that his heart breathes And we all just wanted to just wanted to write these notes: check if you like me check if you don’t check if you’ll date me check if you won’t because we all wanted the love songs to be true and did love dinosaurs once and we wanted the stars to hold our hands to lick the teeth to fuck us but they end up fucking us So let your smile twist like my heart dancing precariously on the edge of my finger tips staining them as that same high school kid licking his thoughts using his sharpie tip writing: I WAS HERE I was here motherfucker and ain’t none of y’all can write that in the spot that I just wrote it in I am here motherfucker and we all here motherfucker and we all motherfuckers motherfucker because every breath I give brings me a second closer to the day that my mother may die and every breath I take takes me a second further from the moment she caught my father’s eye because every word I carry is another stone to put into place in the foundation that I’m building to erase the days and help erase something I never saw: what all of us wanted and what none of us got what we all had and have and what we all forgot that we all wanted to be something that we all became something and it might not be the shit what we once thought it’d be when we were kids but something is still something and like some cats say something’s better then nothing feet are smarter than an engine and dreams are stronger than thighs and questions are the only answers we need to have to know that we’re still as alive as the time when I held the mind of a child asking why is 2 + 3 always equal to 5? Where do people go when they die? What made the beauty of the moon? And the beauty of the sea? Did that beauty make you did that beauty make me? Will it make me something? Will I be something Am I something? And the answer comes: I already am I always was and I still have time to be.

Anis Mojgani, “Here Am I” (via deltaliteraryjournal)

This poem hits me in the tender corners of my heart.

(via bibliogato)

maggie-stiefvater-deactivated20

(via https://soundcloud.com/myami_artist/soldier-prod-by-wayfarer?utm_source=soundcloud&utm_campaign=share&utm_medium=tumblr)

I won't be saying anything new if I say that the history of the world is the history of a ten thousand year war of brains between the rich and the poor. Each side is eternally trying to hoodwink the other side, and it has been this way since the start of time. The poor win a few battles (the peeing in the potted plants, the kicking of pet dogs, etc.) but of course the rich have won the war for ten thousand years. That's why, one day, some wise men, out of compassion for the poor, left them signs and symbols in poems which appear to be about roses and pretty girls and things like that, but when understood correctly spill out secrets that allow the poorest man on earth to conclude the ten-thousand-year-old brain-war on terms favorable to himself.

Aravid Adiga, The White Tiger: A Novel

The first time I read this, I underlined this passage because I was studying for a test. The second time, I had recently stumbled upon this article about the link between poverty and a child’s education, and this quote came to my mind. Stunned, I looked around on my bookshelf and thought about the novels that have basically made me as a person, from teaching me history to decision-making skills to empathy. I have more teachers, and mentors within the pages of books. Books have altered many others’ circumstances as well as mine.

Books are truly magical things.

e4rthy

maggie-stiefvater-deactivated20

(via https://soundcloud.com/outhere-music/charpentier-te-deum-in-te-domine-speravi-le-poeme-harmonique-v-dumestre?utm_source=soundcloud&utm_campaign=share&utm_medium=tumblr)

#rosebook