The Former Anne Spollen's Author Blog Is Being Retitled to "Notes from Living Upghetto": Just YA Writing Stuff

Sunday, July 20, 2008

Just YA Writing Stuff

Recently, a friend of mine who is sort of related to me as well (in one of those inlawish kind of ways) read my novel, and asked why, since I seemed to be able to write, did I "waste" my ability on YA.
It's not the first time that's happened. I don't walk around meeting people, saying,
HI, I WRITE YA.In fact, I rarely tell people I write. But when I do, I see them look away into the distance, and say, "What is YA? Like the Hardy Boys?" This is said with thinly disguised contempt. Okay, maybe it's not so thinly disguised. Maybe it's painfully obvious.
So I can't wait to tell these same folks that I'm almost done with an MG...
But in today's New York Times today, there is an essay that lets me know I'm not alone:

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/07/20/books/review/Rabb-t.html

8 comments:

Jacqui said...: Aargh aargh aargh. The things people say.

I actually think some of the best writing around is YA. And this is from some who, as you know, has been mired in "classics" all summer.

But if you think people are snotty about YA, try telling them you write picture books, and don't even do the art yourself. If I hear "That is so cute!" again, I may scream...; Sunday, 20 July, 2008
Mary Witzl said...: I've had the same comments myself, always made with a smirk and a raised eyebrow. These people obviously have no idea how hard it is to get a YA or an MG written -- and published.

To this day, I remember with love and fondness the wonderful MG and YA books that made a difference in my life. That is why I hope to publish an MG or a YA novel -- to make a difference.; Monday, 21 July, 2008
Anne Spollen said...: I think writing picture books, Jacqui, is similar to writing poetry. And I should know -- I've read thousands of them, and for months my kids would be "hooked" on Eric Carle or Maurice Sendak. I can't imagine having the word/page constraints of a picture book, and getting the whole story, the rhythms, imagining illustrations --doing all that, AND having kids respond to the story. They are a tough audience.
And, Mary, when I first began teaching English, I did my first lesson unit on "Coming of Age" stories which is what we called YA back then in the 80's. It was the only time my remedial kids ever read. I read "coming of age" stories all the time, not knowing yet that I wanted to write YA. Those stories DO make a difference.
And I agree that some of the best stuff around is MG and YA, at least now that the world seems more receptive to these genres.

I wonder if I can only hang around children's writers now in the same way that my single, childless friends became strange to me after the birth of my second son...; Monday, 21 July, 2008
TerriRainer said...: Okay, it can't be worse than the eye-roll you get after telling someone you write romance! It brings to mind cheesy names of anatomical parts...I HATE THAT!

I have actually had several of my friends in the writing community ask me why I DON'T write YA. I was told that the best writing out there in the market right now is in that genre.

Speaking of best writing out there...I will be most surprised if you don't win that contest!

:) Terri; Monday, 21 July, 2008
Anne Spollen said...: Okay, Terri - you are wonderful!

<3 <3 <3

And that does it: it's true. I CAN only hang around with writers WITH kids.
As if my social life isn't sparse enough already...; Monday, 21 July, 2008
TerriRainer said...: YOU WON! YOU WON! YOU WON!!!!!

I knew you would (or at least SHOULD have).

Congrats...you so deserved it!

:) Terri; Tuesday, 22 July, 2008
Anne Spollen said...: Thanks so much, Terri - are you psychic? You did say that before the results were announced. (Music from Twilight Zone rising).

Now I guess I have to get my revising butt in gear to send the three chapters 8> ); Tuesday, 22 July, 2008
Mary Witzl said...: Ooh, congratulations, Anne! I came back here to do some more whining about the whole "Why don't you write for adults?" thing and found this good news!

My whining will hold...; Friday, 01 August, 2008

Books

Light Beneath Ferns

"I have this strange sense that my silence is preparing me for something I can't name . ."

Elizah Rayne is nothing like other fourteen-year-old girls. More interested in bird bones than people, she wraps herself in silence. Trying to escape the shadow of her gambler father, Elizah and her mother move into an old house that borders a cemetery. All her mother wants is for them to have "normal" lives. But that becomes impossible for Elizah when she finds a human jawbone by the river and meets Nathaniel, a strangely hypnotic boy who draws Elizah into his dreamlike and mysterious world.

Only by forgetting everything she knows can Elizah understand the truth about Nathaniel—and discover an unimaginable secret.

Teen made trailer for Light Beneath Ferns.

Order Light Beneath Ferns here.

Foreword Magazine's Review of Light Beneath Ferns

Excerpt from THE SHAPE OF WATER

CHAPTER ONE
I discovered windows one afternoon and after that, nothing was ever the same. They had always been there, of course, glass panes shimmering in the color of rain, but that spring for the first time, I was able to open the windows in my room. For years, the locks had been painted stuck, and during the winter, heat from the radiator beneath my windows finally steamed off enough paint off the metal wings of the locks could be twirled open. Knowing that I could open the windows attracted me to them, and I began sitting under the windows, staring through the glass at the sky. From that position, on a chair in my room, the sky did not seem real; it seemed a place I was making up, so I watched it.
The white wood of the window panes acted as frames so the sky came to me slowly, and the huge openness of its space did not touch me. All the window glass in our old house had wavers and bubbles inside it, so at times the clouds moved like water, melting and blurring until they passed outside of the warp. After a few afternoons of sitting, the heavens seemed too quiet to keep watching so I began watching a small patch of woods next to our yard that housed little more than trees and a scatter of bony, mean-looking rabbits.
I started gazing at the sky and the woods in March when the branches were still wet and it was then, with nothing outside my window but trees and rain, that I noticed a shine inside darkness, I noticed colors glimmering within the darkness of the wood. I watched birds come and go, I watched rain nipple down from buds to the grass. The water dripping from branch edges and leaves created optical tricks; I could see that as I watched leaves melt.
Then one day I ventured into the space outside. I did not think about doing this much beforehand. I simply opened the window and dropped to the ground below, uncertain as to why this should be such a more satisfying exit than simply using the door; my father worked until seven o’clock and I could do whatever I wanted until then. But I liked the solid sound my legs made when I landed. Leaving via a five foot drop seemed so much more a decision than just using a door. The sense of escape made my heart pound, though all I escaped was the soundless spread of moss-colored light inside my house and the silence.
I had come to know silence well during those months after my mother died. When you sit in silence long enough, you learn that silence has a motion. It glides over you without shape or form, but with weight, exactly like water. Its color is silver. And silence has a sound you hear only after hours of wading inside it. The sound is soft, flute notes rising up like the words of glass speaking. There comes a point when you must shatter the silence, when you must shatter the blindness of its words, the blindness of its light. I did this by going into the yard. Once I stood there, in the grass next to the trees I had been watching, I found silence outside as well. But I was happier outside than I had been in the house, so I stayed for a bit. I stood beneath my bedroom window for a few minutes, looking up at the branches and the crooked pieces of sky colliding between the branches. I believed I could identify the scent of the sky as I stood there, a blue menthol fragrance similar to the scent of seawater that sprayed into my face when I first dove into the ocean. That initial scent smelled much more subtle than the ocean’s heavy, fishy aroma, a whiff of salt and mint that warned a more powerful scent would enter my nose just as I approached the water on a dive. It was the scent I dreamed in. And it was the scent of that spring sky as I stood in my yard.

***