The Former Anne Spollen's Author Blog Is Being Retitled to "Notes from Living Upghetto": Being Realistic About YA

Friday, January 9, 2009

Being Realistic About YA

There is a large group of people, and I would venture to say that most of them are either YA authors or editors, who keep saying that YA is real literature. I agree with them, of course, and I agree with them mightily.

But last night I went to a different "TEEN ZONE" at a new library, and I found books with titles like "Boyaholic" and "Confessions of A Teenage Stud" and "Boys Who Bite." Now, if I pretend for a minute I am not a YA author, that I don't really like a lot of the folks involved in YA publishing and say those titles to myself, I have to admit it sounds a lot like advanced comic book writing. That might make you mad, but that's what I admitted to myself last night.

One of my favorite papers to teach is the argument paper. The goal is to convince your reader of your point. Since most of the kids I teach are young adults, they have a tough time with the middle section where counter arguments are proposed. I had one girl, she was about 20, who could not write on the topic of girls not being permitted to play football because she could not think of a counter argument. When I suggested some, she got upset and asked for an alternate assignment. I tried explaining that to defend an opinion, you have to state and disprove common counter arguments.

I think that's pretty much how it is in life, too. There's a lot of cheesy writing in YA, and there's a lot of brilliant writing. But you have to at least comprehend why people might go to the YA shelf anywhere, read those titles, and move on.

In addition to the acne/angst novel, there is the vampire issue. I am not a fan of vampires, though I must admit at the age of twelve or thirteen I alternately wanted to marry either Bram Stoker or Dracula. That was kind of the pinnacle of vampire love for me, and I don't think anyone has come close to his level of writing since. I find vampires especially cheesy, and they abound in the YA genre. I'm not up on the differences between werewolves and vampires, they sort of seem like cousins, but I do remember reading really, really bad novels involving werewolves when I was in middle school. I read them because my friends did, and the writing was, unbelievably,more dreadful than the cover art. (They were the kind of books you hid inside your "Discovery Through Science" textbook during study hall)

But I accept the books that center on acne angst and blood sucking spirits; I just don't think they can be successfully defended. I have trouble accepting bad literature in general, but it exists, probably, because kids like it. It's sort of like Chucky Cheese's for the younger set -- it's a stage you can't wait to pass.

So when people say sensitive things to me like, "Have you thought of writing a real novel? You know, like for adults?" I don't get all huffy. I understand what they see on the shelves and the assumptions they make. It would be hard not to understand that.

On the other hand, I have never been aware of so many people who want to write YA, or who are reading and commenting on YA, and I think that's the key: the genre is improving. Some of the YA stuff I've read recently has been spectacular in every regard, and the title and cover art have been PBS level rather than Fox News.

Watching the genre get better is a lot like raising a teen: you have to hope for the best while you wait for a lot of stuff to fade away.

10 comments:

Marcia said...: Wow, fantastic post. I love your explanation for not getting all huffy about the "real novel" remark. The very commercial books going for mass market appeal are about all that some people know of the genre, and I'm one who has to remember that.; Friday, 09 January, 2009
Anne Spollen said...: I think the folks who are writing YA right now are seeing the change, the elevation actually, of the genre. The same can't be said for people who are browsing it - at least not yet, so we do have to remember their perspective.

The last time I went for an eye exam, the doctor asked if I did a lot of reading and fine print work. I explained that I taught and wrote, and when I said YA, he looked at me, puzzled, and said, "What? You mean like the Hardy boys?"

Sigh.; Sunday, 11 January, 2009
Anonymous said...: What about wizards and fairies in YA? Do you think that hurts YAs reputation?; Sunday, 11 January, 2009
Anne Spollen said...: Hi Mike. Wizards I don't know much aoout, and my daughter is obsessed with fairies, so of course I think they are great. (It's the theme of her room, her reading material and much of her conversation)

But I also don't associate magical beings that much with YA, at least not the pleasant, happy ones like wizards and fairies. YA beings are are more demonically inclined, I think -- so wizards and fairies are more MG where I think they live pretty happily.; Sunday, 11 January, 2009
Carrie Harris said...: You've got me thinking again. I hope you realize how dangerous this is.

But seriously, I know what you mean. I think that some books are dumbed down in a misguided attempt to appeal to teens, which gives them that all fluff, no substance feel. And sure, I agree that we want to write books that will appeal to teens, because otherwise they're not going to read them. (Kind of obvious, I know, but bear with me.) But there are plenty of books that are entertaining without being fluff, and those are the books that make me proud to write YA.

Sure, I write about superheroes and zombies and stuff like that, but that doesn't mean that it has to be vapid.; Monday, 12 January, 2009
Anne Spollen said...: I think you could write about superheroes and zombies and probably even vampires and werewolves if the writing is really good. Hell, you could feature an air duct in your story if you're really talented.

It's when the zombies and blood suckers are bleeding on the covers and the books have sentences like, "He had no remorse about the ancient curse that made him immortal and immoral at the same time." Ow.; Monday, 12 January, 2009
Mary Witzl said...: In our local library back in Scotland, the MG/YA section had more Goosebumps and Sweet Valley Twins than I wanted to see. But then the adults' section had a disproportionate number of Danielle Steele's and Catherine Cookson's novels...

As to your ophthamologist's Hardy Boys = YA comment and how reassuring: someone said something similar to me a while back: "Ooh -- I love YA -- like Nancy Drew, right?" But you really can't get huffy: why should people who don't write it understand? It's a bit like my brother-in-law wondering why I don't write the next DaVinci Code: if he has to ask, he'll never know.; Tuesday, 13 January, 2009
Anne Spollen said...: Not that there's anything wrong with Nancy Drew...I used to love those books, but I know.

It's an up and coming genre, and like most up and coming things, it's going to take a while before it gets respectable.; Wednesday, 14 January, 2009
Carrie Harris said...: Admission time: I now want to write about a zombie air duct, just to prove that it can be done.; Wednesday, 14 January, 2009
Anne Spollen said...: Go right ahead, Carrie: I'll bet you can do it! Do the zombies live in the air duct or just come out of it? Or is it a zombie air duct as in it is physically in the place where the zombies are? And I am going to stop typing now because these are probably the two most bizarre sentences I've ever strung together in my life.

Still, if you do come up with something, we'd all love to see it.; Thursday, 15 January, 2009

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.

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