The Former Anne Spollen's Author Blog Is Being Retitled to "Notes from Living Upghetto": Why I Love Talking to Teens

Monday, March 9, 2009

Why I Love Talking to Teens

One of my pet peeves about a lot of YA is that the authors don't get the voice right. And time and time again, when I ask teens why they stop reading a particular book, they say: "It doesn't sound like anyone I know. I don't know where these kids are from." The teens assume the kids live somewhere else and since teens are natural narcissists, they really want to see reflections of themselves. They don't think the author got anything wrong, just wrote about kids who live where they don't.

And, of course, the folks who write YA are all artifacts to teens, so it's not easy to conjure authentic teenspeak. I think one of the toughest struggles is that teenspeak is not predictable. Plus, it's a weird mix of little kid inhibition mingled with adult observations.

Last week, my oldest guy took four days of standardized testing. To fill in the time, he had to go to one class each morning. His was health. The teacher, not wanting to tax the kids, showed "the birth film" -- the kind of film with such biological accuracy you have to sign a permission slip to allow your child to view it.

Now Christopher never took health in junior high because he's a band kid and they have trouble fitting in electives. So not only had he suffered through three days of writing and math, on the fourth day he saw the story of human birth. I knew immediately when he walked through the door that something was wrong.

"So I saw that movie today," he said before the door was shut. (This is a kid who normally has to be plied with tacquitos and ice cream before I can even find out if he had a math quiz)

"Mom, did you know that more than the baby comes out?"

"Uhh, yeah, I did. I read that somewhere."

"That was absolutely...I can't eat. Why did you sign that slip? Do you know what I just had to watch? You have no idea."

"I have an idea."

"So does the guy have to stay, like when the wife has the baby? And like watch?"

"I sent Dad home to take care of you when your brother was being born. You had just turned two and..."

"So he doesn't have to stay?"

"I would say that's sort of up to the woman. It's kind of her show."

"But you could like agree before the baby was born that the guy doesn't have to be there, right?"

"Sure. You just check that option off when you're ordering your wife."

"Because I would pass out. I felt really far away when I was watching it. I had to hold onto the desk for a few minutes."

"Your father did pass out. And you were born in spite of him being on a stretcher for about an hour. He actually didn't see anything."

"Maybe I'll do that."

"So how was the test? You had writing today, right?"

"Decent. Why did you leave these pants in my drawer? They're from like middle school or something."

"There are clean pants folded on the dining room table. I just didn't get a chance to put them in your drawer."

He takes a sandwich and looks at me, "Cause these are so tight, I could actually feel my sperm dying."

"I heard that helps you write better."

"Gawd, Mom. It's like you don't hear anything I say."

14 comments:

Katie Anderson said...: Ooo You're Goooood. I love reading these conversations you have :-); Monday, 09 March, 2009
Anne Spollen said...: Well, thanks, Katie.

I can't tell you how hard it is not to crack up sometimes when they and their friends talk to me.; Monday, 09 March, 2009
Anonymous said...: Hey Anne! Is the second ya book the cutting book?; Monday, 09 March, 2009
Stephanie J. Blake said...: I'm cracking up. These are the kind of convos I have with my 17yo. It's like a brief wormhole opens...they share...and then we become annoying again.; Monday, 09 March, 2009
Anne Spollen said...: Hi (again) Heather. No, sorry, not the cutting book. I probably shouldn't have said anything about that since I'm behind on writing I've already been paid for...it's more in the idea stage right now. But that's ok -- no writer, anywhere, would turn away a fan of a book they've yet to write, trust me.

Yeah, Stephanie, that's it exactly. A wormhole, and they have absolutely no capacity to include themselves in any process they deem unsuitable. When I taught literature, they would write essays about "...those people who have flaws..." thereby excluding themselves.

But when they do get around to sharing, it's pretty amusing.; Monday, 09 March, 2009
Adrienne said...: Their conversations are amazing. I just love how they can sound so mature in one moment, and launch into utter nonesense in the next.
I'm also glad to know I'm not the only one with laundry in the dining room :); Monday, 09 March, 2009
Anne Spollen said...: I love the way they don't process stuff, yet perpetually feel the adults aren't listening. Of course, I was exactly that way...

And, yeah, that's the purpose of a dining room table on the off seasons of major holidays: it's a horizontal closet. Everybody knows that. ; ); Tuesday, 10 March, 2009
Mary Witzl said...: I love it that your son asked why you signed that form for him! My 17-year-old wouldn't get anywhere near that film. She thinks the whole birth process is just too gross for words. Which is okay by me: I'd be really nervous if she was thrilled with it and couldn't wait to give it a go.

Our living room couch is currently festooned with laundry. Ditto the dining room table and chairs.; Wednesday, 11 March, 2009
Christy Raedeke said...: God I love this post. You're so lucky to be living in a petri dish of teenishness.; Thursday, 12 March, 2009
Mary Witzl said...: I've come back to reread this and I laughed just as hard this time. Brilliant.

(Mary Witzl. Who can't get her URL up and running on the university computer); Thursday, 12 March, 2009
Marcia said...: One of my pet peeves about a lot of YA is that the authors don't get the voice right. And time and time again, when I ask teens why they stop reading a particular book, they say: "It doesn't sound like anyone I know. I don't know where these kids are from." The teens assume the kids live somewhere else and since teens are natural narcissists, they really want to see reflections of themselves. They don't think the author got anything wrong, just wrote about kids who live where they don't.

Very, very interesting. And I love the conversation with your kids, as always.; Saturday, 14 March, 2009
Anne Spollen said...: I know, it is cool to live with teens because the dialogue is inescapable. On the down side, when I tried once to write an adult novel, everyone sounded about 16...

Teenishness...love that word!

Yeah, laundry. Bureaus are so 90's.; Sunday, 15 March, 2009
Nora MacFarlane said...: ROFL - I love this!
Laundry? I thought that's what the treadmill was for...; Sunday, 15 March, 2009
Unknown said...: Oh..love it, love it, LOVE it! So true to life. Basically the only time my son really shares anything is when we are in the car. Lately I've been driving him to his finals (he is attending his first semester of college and living home) and it gives us a chance to talk. Eighteen is still a teen, but it's a little less like pulling teeth! To simulate teen guy speak I always use "whatever", a staple of year 17.

Girls are so different. My 14 yo daughter tells me way more than I even want to know sprinkled with snide comments that imply I am a total dork and understand nothing.; Monday, 21 December, 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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