“I am writing a short story about a lesbian main character … and almost had it finished when I had a panic attack. I was at a conference talking about my story when a lesbian told me she would never take it seriously because I wasn’t a lesbian and I can’t know what that feels like. But to me that love is love and normal and just like love between anyone else except for that one guy back home and his sheep. I don’t want to do this wrong. I want their love to be the reason my MC survives this ordeal but I don’t want to offend either. What can I do?”

First off, I think it’s great that you’re writing a story about a lesbian character, and that you understand that love is love.¹ That’s wonderful!

Our girl Sappho

As for the comment made by the lesbian at the conference, well, some lesbians are going to think that way, and they have every right to. For a long, long time (virtually all of history, except for Sappho!), representations of women who love women were made by people who were not women who love women. Some of those representations were perfectly fine; many of them were (and still are) offensive or badly done.

Now that we live in a time period in which lesbians are more freely able to represent themselves — in books, art, the world at large — I think you can understand why many lesbians might prefer to read/watch/experience stories about lesbians created by lesbians. They may in fact be more accurate in their representations, or they may simply seem that way because the reader/viewer knows the creator has been through it, to some degree.

Also, there’s a matter of pride. Sometimes we like to support our own kind.

BUT: Representations of lesbians are not only done well by lesbians, and I think it’s a bit limiting to believe that. I’ve certainly read books about lesbians that were written by non-lesbians, and they’ve been great! Most recently, I adored Tripping to Somewhere by Kristopher Reisz. It wasn’t until someone mentioned (on Twitter? I can’t recall) that she didn’t usually read books about lesbians written by men that I even thought about the fact that Reisz is a man.

Obviously, sometimes men get it so, so wrong when it comes to lesbians. Sometimes straight women get it wrong, too. But that doesn’t mean that (1) you will get it wrong; or (2) lesbians always get it right.

It’s a good thing for a writer to be concerned about getting it right when s/he is writing about a group of people s/he is not part of and which has historically been oppressed. That is the first step in the  direction of getting it right.

What else can you do? Well, you might read “Transracial Writing for the Sincere” by Nisi Shawl, which is a great primer on writing about “the other.” You can also read Nisi Shawl and Cynthia Ward’s Writing the Other: A Practical Guide.

And, you probably know this already, but do your research. You can start with reading about queer people. Take a look at my series of posts on Avoiding LGBTQ Stereotypes. Go to the library and read up on LGBT history and culture. Go online and get lost in AfterEllen or AfterElton, where you’ll get a massive dose of contemporary pop queer culture. And, of course, talk to your queer friends. You might ask one of them if they’re interested in reading your story, just to gut check whether you’re “getting it right.”

And remember: Every queer person has a different life story — just like every human being. If you think of your character as a human being first, that’s a great place to start.

1. No comment about the sheep!

The one question that every creative professional (writer, artist, musician, whatever) gets asked is: Where do you get your inspiration? Well, today I’ve decided to share with the world my top 10 sources of inspiration!

10. The 4-Mile Walk to the Frozen Yogurt Shop

The actual road I walk to the frozen yogurt shop

When people ask me how to get around writer’s blocks, I’m always tempted to answer cheekily: “Walk around the block.” But what I really mean is, go for a long walk. Go for the walk thinking that you’re going to get some fresh air, clear your head, get some exercise, anything except the problem you’re facing in your writing.

Where I live, it’s about two miles to the frozen yogurt shop in the next town over. Sometimes I walk all the way there, listening to music or a podcast on my iPod. When I get there, I’m feeling extremely healthy, so I obviously buy myself some frozen yogurt and put all sorts of toppings on it. Then I walk back (more slowly) eating it. Somewhere along the way, whatever problem I’ve been having with my writing is totally solved. It’s magic, assisted by a lovely frosty treat. Try it!

(Also works with: ice cream shops, cafes where you can order a delectable coffee of some sort, cupcake shops, etc. The trick is to find one appropriately far enough from where you’re writing so that you work off the calories of eating the treat while walking there and back. Sneaky!)

9. The Shower

It’s true, hot water does more than ease your muscles. It seems to somehow open the pores of your brain. This is aided by the addition of really yummy-smelling soaps and shower gels. (Seriously, if you don’t like your soap, the chances of finding inspiration in the shower decline precipitously.)

The trick is to focus on the shower itself: the water on your skin, the fragrance of your carefully selected cleansing product, the rituals of bathing. The likelihood of inspiration striking is directly related to the degree of focus you give the shower. The more you think about the shower and not your desire for inspiration, the more likely the inspiration will come.

(For some people, it also works with baths. I’m not really a bath person.)

8. The Traffic

This could totally happen ... in your imagination.

Being in stuck in traffic could seem horribly frustrating, but it is also a source of inspiration. The next time you’re sitting behind a long line of immovable vehicles, tell yourself a story. Anything. All you want to do is distract yourself.

See that blue Ford truck over there? And the guy in black-rimmed glasses driving it? Think about him. What the hell made a hipster (he’s also got a super trendy haircut) get himself a Ford truck? It’s probably because it’s not his. He’s borrowing it from his super butch boyfriend, who works construction, but is currently laid up in a hospital due to a construction accident. So the hipster boy is driving the truck to see him … except he might stop off at the construction site to pick up his boyfriend’s paycheck, where he realizes that the accident WAS NOT AN ACCIDENT AFTER ALL.

Etc.

(Just pay attention to the traffic, too. It’s going to move sometime.)

7. Battlestar Galactica

If you haven’t seen this television show, what have you been waiting for? It’s the FONT of many an inspiration for me, and I know it can be for you, too. Wait! you say. Isn’t that some dorky scifi show about robots?

NO! It is an incredibly nuanced story about life and meaning and honor and tricky, tricky villains. It is about God and gods, it’s about love and hate, it’s about forming alliances between people who may have nothing in common on the surface but underneath it all, they just want a home. And beyond that, the music is amazing, the visual imagery of the show is also spectacular, and most important of all, the characters are incredibly three-dimensional.

For me, watching a really complicated television series awakens my brain. It makes me feel like all my synapses are firing, and all sorts of ideas start sparking all over the place. It doesn’t have to be Battlestar Galactica for you. Maybe it’s The Sopranos or The Walking Dead or whatever — the point is, seeing something amazingly layered unfold over hours and hours can awaken all sorts of inspiration.

I think it can work with movies, too, as long as you are sufficiently drawn into the story to completely forget about your own writing. As soon as you forget, the ideas come.

6. The Book You Wish You Wrote

An amazing book sculpture by Su Blackwell

When I read a book that affects me so positively that I wish I’d written it, I feel inspired to push myself harder as a writer. This source of inspiration isn’t really about generating a new idea; it’s about generating motivation to improve. I see a beautifully crafted sentence and I think: I want to write like that. I read a multilayered plot and I think: I need to learn how to do that.

It’s important to feed your motivation to improve, because if you don’t have the motivation, you won’t improve. I’ve found the best way to stimulate that motivation is to read books that amaze me. The best part of it is, I never know when a book like that will hit. When it does, it’s like somebody gave me a gift out of nowhere. Don’t you love getting presents? The only thing you have to do to get them is to read a lot. I guarantee you’ll find books that turn your world upside down, as long as you don’t stop reading.

5. Public Transit

Mermaids on the subway. Totally real.

Sometimes the train stinks (literally). Sometimes the bus makes me nauseated. But also: Riding public transit is an unending source of inspiration.

That woman with the pierced lip and the black eyeliner. Who is she? Maybe she’s on her way to an assignation with a witch who lives downtown under the Macy’s store. There are basements there that lead to the underworld, you know.

That boy slouching into his puffy black coat, carrying the messenger bag stuffed so full it takes up the entire seat next to him. What’s in that bag? Is he a courier? And what is he carrying? What if it’s the head of a zombie?

That’s not even the most far out answer I could come up with. The point is that there are stories everywhere. Your task, especially if you’re bored on the subway, is to discover them by asking a few key questions: Why? What is that? Where are they going? The stories will come right out.

4. The Book You Know You Could Write Better

We all know the feeling of finishing a novel and wanting to throw it against the wall because the premise, while initially appealing, took such an appalling turn that you can’t believe the book was published! (No, I’m not telling you which books I felt that about.)

You can take this feeling of frustration and “THIS IS SO UNFAIR I CAN WRITE BETTER THAN THAT CRAP” and turn it, directly, into inspiration. Can you really write better? All right then, how would you have told the story? Then do it.

3. The Meditation Cushion

Many people think that meditation is about clearing the mind, about not thinking. I’ve been taught that meditation is about being present. It’s about feeling the cushion beneath your butt, and the way your left leg is slowly starting to fall asleep as you try (sometimes unsuccessfully) to focus on your breath. It’s about coming back to being present every time you notice that your thoughts begin to accelerate away from the here-and-now.

I admit it: I get distracted a lot when I meditate. I try to come back to the present as soon as I notice that I’m not here anymore, but (secretly) I don’t really mind being distracted. Because a lot of the time, I’ve been envisioning some aspect of the story I’m writing. For me, there’s something about sitting there and trying to focus on breathing that seems to throw open the door to my imagination.

It could be that I’ve been doing this for a while (er, coming up on nine years now) and I’ve trained myself to be this way. But I remember when I first started learning to meditate, I immediately noticed how much it opened up my mind. It actually felt miraculous to have that door open so easily and so regularly, and now I do it every morning before I write.

2. The Elliptical Machine

Some people will never be able to sit on a cushion in silence. For them, I recommend another tried-and-true source of inspiration: the elliptical machine. (OK, it could also be: running, the treadmill, a stationary bike, etc.) I cannot tell you how many thorny plot problems I’ve worked out while sweating on the elliptical at the gym.

I think it has something to do with exercising your physical body in a repetitive way. If you have to do something that requires concentration, like pilates class or lifting weights or doing an active yoga class, I don’t think it works. You need to do something that your brain doesn’t have to think about; something that your body can do all on its own. It helps if what you’re doing hurts just enough to make you yearn to be distracted. (If it hurts too much, you’ll just give up.)

To distract yourself, you can make up stories! Or you can let your brain wander around the problem that you’re facing in your writing. I believe the fact that you’re exercising and sweating will temper any fear of not being inspired/not coming up with the answer to your problem. Why? Because your body is too busy exercising to chastise yourself. And also: you’re being so virtuous by exercising! You’re already a superstar! Figuring out this writing problem will just be icing on the cake. And even if you don’t figure it out, it doesn’t matter, because did I mention you have been working out and being totally virtuous? Go ahead, pat yourself on the back and go have a doughnut.

(Doughnuts can also be inspiring.)

1. Dreams (They’re Not Just For Stephenie Meyer)

Everybody knows that Twilight came to Stephenie Meyer in a dream, but don’t discount dreams as a source of inspiration just because it seems so clicheed! Just the other day, I dreamed that I was in Las Vegas and had parked my car in a vast multistory underground garage. When I went to pick it up, lo and behold my car was gone! It had been stolen!

Luckily, in my dream, I overheard the thieves talking very nearby. They were two people: a youngish man with long dirty blond hair wearing a brown raincoat, and another person whose appearance I don’t entirely recall but had curly brown hair. They fully admitted they’d stolen my car, along with something else … my heart, which had been stored in a jar.

The thieves suddenly ran away, vanishing instantly! The hotel manager, though, was at my side and guaranteed that he would catch them, since they had security guards posted all over the place.

Now, I don’t know if your dreams are as crazy as mine, but if they’re not, there’s one way to make them more interesting. Start writing them down. I did this once, and I began to remember so many of my dreams that it was frankly overwhelming. I stopped writing them down, but these days I still remember them. Sometimes they’re full of anxiety, and those aren’t necessarily useful for inspiration, but every once in a while I’ll have a dream that is SO FREAKING AMAZING that I run out of bed and write it down right away. One of those dreams gave birth to my next book, Adaptation.

And if you don’t think your dreams are interesting enough to draw inspiration from, I give you my most recent crazy dream. Go ahead: write a story about a world in which people store their hearts in jars. What kind of world is that? And who would be stupid enough to leave their jarred heart in a parking garage in Las Vegas?

Good luck!

I’m a feminist. I’m an athlete. As a child I was what was then called a “tomboy,” which to me means merely that the things I was told were “boy” things, like playing outdoors, climbing trees, being active, and wanting to have adventures, were the things I did and wanted to do.

I try very hard to write stories in which there are as many female characters as male characters, with as much agency and importance in the plot. Yet I often have consciously to go back through later drafts to make sure that my female leads aren’t being more passive than I actually want them to be, aren’t letting others make decisions for them or devise all the cunning plans (unless there is a specific reason because of experience, competencies, or social roles), are showing leadership, and are present as confident individuals with a strong sense of themselves (as long as that is within character).

Kate is reacting to a post from Mette Ivie Harrison that concludes, “All gender, in my view, is in the end, a masquerade.” (You can read the whole of Mette’s post here.) Kate continues:

I go on about this because I’m trying to understand how these underlying message creep into my ways of struggling with gender in my fiction. I don’t have an answer, nor do I think there really is one except for the constant need to be alert, to be present, to try to keep one’s eyes open and learn and do better. It’s a constant, changing process, just as living is.

Do you struggle with gender issues in your work? Do you struggle with gender issues in work you read? To go back to what Harrison said, where do you find your authenticity?

When I read Kate’s post I was immediately struck with a sense of “wow, I’ve done that,” particularly where she writes about consciously going through later drafts of her novels to make sure her female leads aren’t being too passive.

I, too, am a feminist. And I’m a lesbian. I’ve been thinking about gender as a lived experience for a while, especially because I have plenty of friends who aren’t traditionally feminine. I would have expected that in my writing, I wouldn’t fall back on traditional Western beliefs about passivity and femininity.

In my first two fantasy novels, Ash and Huntress, I don’t think I encountered the passivity problem. But with my next novel, I found myself falling straight into the passive feminine character trap — even when I truly, in my gut, did not believe that character was a passive individual. It was a little startling to me to see it on the page, and I do hope that in revision her character has become the individual I imagined her to be.

In thinking about why this happened, I believe it’s because my first two novels were not set in the contemporary United States. They are both set in secondary fantasy worlds where I have purposely expunged homophobia and (mostly) sexism from those societies. Because of that, the girls in those books are not weighted down with the expectations and traditions that an American girl in the twenty-first century is burdened with. I took great joy in turning those traditions upside down.

But when I began writing a book set in the contemporary USA (Adaptation), I promptly fell into the passive trap. I had never written a novel set in the “real world,” and suddenly I was dealing with all sorts of expectations and traditions about the way girls behave, how they dress, what they do. It was … truly weird. Yes, I found it much weirder to write about contemporary teen girls than magically gifted sages or tomboyish heroines who like to go hunting.

The weirdness might come out of both being fairly close to the experience of a contemporary teen girl (I mean, I was one — not yesterday, but within living memory) and also having come very far from it (by coming out, by being in a community full of gender questioning). In the last year I’ve thought a lot about things I never expected I’d have to think about again: boys, for one thing.

How do girls think about boys, and how can I express that without falling into the passive trap in which the boy is always initiating things? In a related vein, how should my boy characters behave? (In my previous books, my male characters were men. I knew how they behaved. But boys, not surprisingly, are a foreign country to me.) How do I present their masculinity in a way that’s appealing and sexy, without falling into too many “hot boy” traps? (These are common in YA, and involve jewel-colored eyes, broad shoulders, and brooding, not necessarily in that order.)

And clothes. How can a character express her identity through her clothing? In Ash and Huntress, the girls basically wear uniforms — except when Ash goes to the ball. That ball gown is one moment of theatrical costuming that I understood; it was symbolic and it was magical. But in a book set in the contemporary USA, every time a girl gets dressed, it says something about her. And my job was to figure out what I wanted it to say. (I’m not even getting into makeup.)

These are things that most women probably have absorbed as common, everyday behaviors that they do almost without thinking. But as the writer creating a female character, I had to think about these everyday behaviors in a way that felt totally foreign to me. I had to think about them as chock full of meaning.

(To some extent, this is what all writing is about: thinking about the everyday with a different, symbolic lens. But it’s very easy to simply write a story set in the real world without thinking about these issues at all; to just write a girl wearing makeup and a skirt without being conscious of the fact that her appearance speaks volumes about gender, sexuality, class, etc. I’m also not saying that every book must engage with these issues, but my books do. So I think about them.)

That’s not to say that every tiny little gesture a character makes is laden with symbolism (necessarily), but yeah: the way a girl looks and acts and thinks about boys (and girls) is full of statements about gender. This is one of those moments where I think, duh, Malinda, you should know that by now. But putting it into practice, in writing, is a very interesting experience. It’s like un-doing everything you do every day automatically, and re-doing it with purpose. It can be trippy.

A year of virtuous healthful living?

The opposite?

Or perhaps you expect the apocalypse?

(I know, it’s the wrong apocalypse, but isn’t that hilarious?)

Depending on what you expect, you might resolve to do different things. I have never been terribly serious about making resolutions because I know that I am afflicted with an Extreme Case of Guilty Conscience, and if I resolve to do something and fail to follow through, I will probably implode with guilt. So, for the last couple of years I resolved to read a few books. Well, I’m not going to resolve that this year because, honestly, I’m still in the middle of reading Orlando (which I swear I intend to finish … sometime) and because the idea of it no longer strikes me as fun.

So, this year, I am resolving nothing. Not in a sneaky wu wei way, but I think it’s plenty enough for me to just keep on doing what I’ve been doing, perhaps with the added goal of doing a little less of it. As I mentioned back at Thanksgiving, 2011 was pretty busy for me, and I’d like to have more time to do nothing (perhaps, yes, in the wu wei way).

Also, I suspect that I will be busy enough in 2012 dealing with the fruits of all my 2011 labor. This year I have a number of books coming out! Here’s my publication schedule for 2012:

May 2012: The Letter Q: Queer Writers’ Notes To Their Younger Selves, edited by Sarah Moon (I have a letter to my 16-year-old self in this anthology)

July 2012: The paperback edition of Huntress, with special bonus content!

Fall 2012: Foretold, edited by Carrie Ryan (I have a short story in this anthology about prophecies)

Fall 2012: Adaptation, my next novel!

I’m really excited about all of this, but of course I am most excited about bringing my next new novel into the world. And that’s where I slam right up against expectations.

You see, Adaptation is quite different from Ash and Huntress. In fact, I do not doubt that some readers will think they were written by totally different people. So, if someone has read Ash or Huntress and picks up Adaptation expecting something similar … they will be sorely disappointed.

I know that at times I’ve gotten attached to a writer’s or musician’s particular style, and when they come out with something different, at first I am usually disappointed because I wanted more of what they’d already given me. This is a totally normal reaction. But at the same time, I think it’s a bit much to expect (there’s that word again) a writer or musician (or anybody, really) to simply do the same thing over and over again.

Sure, there are writers who do that brilliantly, and I love them for it. In fact, these are often the authors whose books I reach for when I want something very consistent and comforting, like Elizabeth Peters or her alter ego Barbara Michaels. There’s nothing wrong with writing variations on a single theme.

It’s just that I’ve realized I am not that kind of writer. Huntress was already somewhat different from Ash, though it had a similar serious fantasy feel. But Adaptation is totally different. I think I’m going to spend a lot of time this year repeating that. “It’s different! It’s totally different!”

This doesn’t mean that I never want to write in the style of Ash again. In fact, the story being published in Foretold is very much in that style. That story, “One True Love,” is another fairy tale (sort of). It felt totally comfortable for me to write that story. I remember that when I was writing it, I felt like I actually knew what I was doing for once. That was a really nice feeling.

But I also like being challenged by doing new things. I think it’s fun to strike out into new storytelling territory and figure out how to develop a style to fit that space. It reminds me that writing is really about decisions: What word to use here, what phrase to use there. You choose different words for different styles. It’s both an intellectual and creative exercise for me, and it was thrilling to be able to use words in Adaptation that I could not use in Ash or Huntress because of the nature of their stories.

So, Adaptation: “It’s different!” It’s set in the near-future United States, for one thing, rather than a magical fantasy world. And while my influences and inspirations for Ash and Huntress ran along the lines of Robin McKinley and Kristin Cashore, my influences and inspirations for Adaptation came straight out of … television.

I know, you’re shocked (and maybe a little disappointed), right? Here are some of my inspirations for Adaptation:

The thing that I’ve noticed, though, about writers or artists who zoom from one style to another, is that beneath those stylistic differences, you can often still detect the core of the artist. The themes are sometimes very similar. For example, when Sarah Waters shifted from writing Victorian romps to writing World War II-era novels, some themes remained: confinement, for one thing. I’ve always thought that was fascinating about her books. And though Holly Black’s Modern Faery Tales are very different in style from her Curse Workers series, they all still seem to deal with moral ambiguity.

If there’s a theme in my books, I think it’s the transformative power of love. This sounds cheesy, but I totally see it running through everything I write. So, that’s still in Adaptation (and its sequel, which I’m currently writing). But, other than that? Yeah. Different.

So. Expectations. They can really choke the joy out of experiencing something new. And maybe I lied when I said I’m not making any resolutions this year. Maybe I am resolving to have fewer expectations. To open a book and not expect A, B, or C. To let the story speak for itself.

Happy new year!

This free two-session writing workshop will cover the main elements of writing fantasy and science fiction, from how to create three-dimensional fantasy worlds to the basics of plot, to how to develop characters, and how to revise drafts. The workshop will also include opportunities for students to write and share their own work.

In more detail, here’s what I’ll be covering:

DAY 1: Saturday, Jan. 21

3-4 p.m. — The Basics of Plot (With an Assist From Harry Potter)
4-5 p.m. — Worldbuilding 101

DAY 2: Saturday, Jan. 28

3-4 p.m. — How to Make Your Characters Suffer Live
4-4:30 p.m. — Putting the Vision in Revision
4:30-5 p.m. — Q&A

And here’s how to sign up for this workshop:

• Enrollment is limited and pre-registration is required
• Students must be in grades 9-12 and sign up for both days
• Visit or call the reference desk at: 415.457.5629

This event is supported by Poets & Writers, Inc. through a grant it has received from The James Irvine Foundation and by The Friends of the Marin County Free Library

How to not give up when writing

Revising with Scrivener

Writing about race in speculative fiction

Taking the homophobia out of fantasy

How do you do that? Writer’s block and other problems

The inner editor vs. the inner critic, and how to ignore them

Avoiding LGBTQ Stereotypes in YA Fiction, Part 1: Major LGBTQ Stereotypes
Avoiding LGBTQ Stereotypes in YA Fiction, Part 2: Gender
Avoiding LGBTQ Stereotypes in YA Fiction, Part 3: Words to watch out for – UPDATED
Avoiding LGBTQ Stereotypes in YA Fiction, Part 4: Secondary characters and gay jokes
Avoiding LGBTQ Stereotypes in YA Fiction, Part 5: Resources

What I learned from abstract painting class, part 1
What I learned from abstract painting class, part 2
What I learned from abstract painting class, part 3

How do I get published?

That’s a lot of blogging about writing already, but if you have any questions about writing that you think I could answer, feel free to ask in the comments, and I’ll do my best to answer them this month. Good luck with your NaNo novels!

I react to these kinds of essays with a mixture of resignation and indignation, because generally they’re characterized by a glaring blindness on the part of the authors. Most of the people who write these essays don’t seem to have much of any familiarity with today’s young adult book market.¹ They tend to base their conclusions on personal experience of the dated kind: what they read when they were teens (usually 20-30 years ago), and how today’s bestsellers (typically Twilight or The Hunger Games) compare. Usually, The Hunger Games is more cold-bloodedly violent, and Twilight is a bad example for girls.

I think that author Andrea Cremer said it best in her tweet about the Salon.com piece:

I absolutely agree. This debate about YA’s qualities or lack thereof is clearly a way for adults to express their anxiety about adolescence today: whether it’s coming on too soon, whether it’s ending too quickly. The world in general seems to be an increasingly brutal place, not only in real terms (the war in Afghanistan, uprisings in the Middle East, etc.) but in virtual ones as well (the American entertainment industry contributes substantially via everything from crass TV to first-person shooter video games).

Books have traditionally been seen as “good for you,” and I think that the commercialization of young adult fiction — pushed by the success of the Harry Potter series, Twilight, and, yes, The Hunger Games — strikes a certain kind of terror in the hearts of the predominantly upper middle-class literary types who eat up these articles. If the books (which are supposed to be virtuous and moral) are going to hell, what’s next?

As a writer of young adult novels, I’m sometimes amused by the fear that these articles seem to express. Books: So powerful! So influential — possibly in horrible ways! And yet, of course they can be. That’s why they’re so wonderful.

On the other hand, these articles often express a snobbery about YA that is a bit more difficult to brush off. YA books: So trashy! So poorly written! So simplistic! Though yes, of course that can be true, too.²

What frustrates me about this whole debate, I think, are the assumptions that people who don’t read YA make. I get this not only in these articles (which are, at least, not personal), but in person. I’ve had good friends say to me, “I tried to read Ash, but it was so hard! I thought books for teens were supposed to be easy to read!”³ I’ve had other friends look at me in bewilderment when they realize my books are young adult novels. I can practically see all their assumptions whirling through their mind: These books are for teens, so I probably won’t be interested. They’re probably dumbed down and not worth it. What is my friend doing writing for teens, anyway? She’s better than that!

As a writer, my own path to young adult fiction was an unexpected one. Some stereotypes about YA fiction are based on the idea that a YA novelist is deeply nostalgic for her teen years and wants to relive them through fiction.

The poster for Charlize Theron's next movie, already chock full of YA stereotypes.

Well, I can tell you for sure that I am not nostalgic about my teen years. I hated them, and I’m very glad there’s no such thing as time travel so that I never have to go back.

Many YA writers I know came to write YA fiction because they enjoy reading it. But I didn’t read YA until after I sold Ash. I think that’s why Ash has a kind of old-fashioned feel — it’s based in the reading experience of my own teen years, approximately 20 years ago. However, once I started reading YA, I quickly realized that as a writer, I absolutely belong in this category of fiction.

For me, there are some very specific things about YA that make creative sense. YA is particularly story-based. Think TV and film: you are drawn in to a story immediately, or at least, that’s the goal. Story, story, story. This is YA.

I’m the first to admit that I’ve never been especially drawn to adult literary fiction. I very rarely connect with it, although I have read and loved the odd literary novel. This is because I generally value story over literary affect. I tend to prefer an arresting tale over a pretty sentence. If I want a pretty sentence, I will read poetry, and I do enjoy poetry when I read it (even if I don’t understand it!).

Another thing I enjoy about YA is the fact that it allows the writer to mash together many genres. Adult fiction is fairly divided when it comes to genre: science fiction does not usually cross over into mystery, which does not usually cross over into romance. There are exceptions as always, but typically, a book is published in one genre, and the book must obey that genre’s conventions or risk alienating the genre’s readers. YA, on the other hand, lets me combine mystery and romance and science fiction into one glorious hybrid whole.

I think this is a reflection of the fact that adolescence is about trying new things. Teens aren’t fixed in their personalities yet, even though they have very definite ideas about what their personality is. They’re not afraid to smush things around a little and see what results. That kind of freedom is what I find so endearing and so liberating about YA. It enables me to tell the story I want, using many of my favorite tools (mystery! romance! intrigue! magic!).

Of course, there are some limitations to the YA category, and anyone who says YA can cover any subject is not telling the whole truth. You won’t find navel-gazing books about middle-aged people in YA, and you’re unlikely to find explicit sex or truly extreme evil. This is not because teens can’t handle these subjects or because they don’t encounter them in real life — they do. It’s because YA is, at its most basic level, a marketing category, and libraries and schools are hesitant to buy books that are likely to upset parents. Parents, not teens. I’m pretty sure teens want to read about sex and death.

This is where that debate flares up: adults expressing their anxiety over teens’ incipient adulthood.

I’m sure that someday I will want to write something that involves explicit sex and/or extreme evil⁴, because as a writer, I’ve noticed that I’m increasingly drawn to telling stories about the highest highs and the lowest lows. I want to tell Big Stories (again, emphasis on story). So, I’m sure that someday I will write an “adult” novel. I’m not sure, though, whether I will ever really fit into the world of adult fiction. I do enjoy adult genre fiction; I’ve been a mystery and scifi/fantasy reader for decades. But what if I want to mash up those genres? I’m pretty sure I will. How will that work in the adult fiction market?

I don’t know, and I’m not that concerned about it. I’ll write the story I want to write, and I’ll go from there. For now, I’m happy to be writing young adult fiction, even if I do get that weird shifty-eyed look from my (adult) friends every once in a while. I like the creative tools that I get to use when writing YA. They make sense to me as a writer, and that’s why I’m writing young adult novels.

1. Yes, the infamous Wall Street Journal article is an exception, and I think that’s why it engendered such a heated backlash from the YA community.
2. I want to note that it can be true of all fiction. Plenty of adult fiction is trashy, poorly written, and simplistic. But somehow that’s accepted as obvious, whereas YA is often held up to a higher “moral” standard.
3. I don’t actually mind that my friend said this to me, though it was startling. She’s a really good friend.
4. I’m not saying that a book must include explicit sex or extreme evil to be worth reading or writing. Plenty of wonderful books that I love don’t include any of it.

1. I don’t think love triangles are inherently bad. They can be deliciously complicated and can be used to create excellent tension and drama in a story.
2. That said, I don’t think love triangles are inherently good. They can come off as more gimmick than genuine, and they don’t always work.
3. Yes, I have a reason that I’m interested in love triangles, and that reason is in my next book.
4. I am not a fan of love triangles in real life. I’m not talking about real life here. I’m talking about fiction.

So, for a long time now, I’ve been thinking about what people mean by “love triangle.” Is it: (A) One person who has two people interested in her?

Twilight: Bella loves Edward and Jacob, but do they have a real relationship with each other?

Threesome: Alex (Lara Flynn Boyle) is into Eddy (Josh Charles), who is into Stuart (Stephen Baldwin), who is into Alex

(C) Or is it A who is interested in B and C, but B and C are close friends?

The Infernal Devices: Tessa has feelings for Will and Jem, who are best friends

(Tessa fanart by smitth.)

Carrie Ryan has an especially interesting perspective on love triangles in YA. She argues:

To me, that’s the essence of a love triangle — each man is a viable choice for the heroine but each speaks to a different part of who she is.  The heroine isn’t choosing between two men, she’s choosing who SHE wants to be and that will dictate who the right match is.

I think that Carrie’s definition of a love triangle is actually the kind that is most often seen in YA. The two options for the heroine (and it’s pretty much always a heroine choosing between two guys) are indeed symbolic of who she wants to be in the future.

I don’t think this is my favorite kind of love triangle, though, and I say that mostly on a gut-instinct level. I think what’s missing for me is the connector between the two options. If the two love potential love interests have no relationship with each other (romantic or not), there is less of a triangular charge; it’s really more of a V.

This is partly why I have often been surprised when readers tell me they think there’s a love triangle in Ash. I think that the fact that they see one mostly speaks to the fact that readers actually really enjoy love triangles and they’re on the lookout for them. There are, indeed, three people who could potentially form points on a love triangle in Ash, but two of those people never connect. For me, that erases the triangular aspect of it.

However, I didn’t really get a firm grasp on what makes a love triangle work for me until I read this article in Entertainment Weekly about season 2 of The Walking Dead. [SPOILER WARNING for The Walking Dead!]

”When it comes to the triangle, you can’t pick two people who don’t love each other,” says Callies [actress Sarah Wayne Callies, who plays Lori Grimes]. ”I think Rick and Shane love each other every bit as much as Rick and Lori, and every bit as much as Lori and Shane.

For the record, I only recently watched season 1 of The Walking Dead and I totally loved it. I cannot wait till the season 2 premiere (this Sunday! woohoo!).

I thought one of the most interesting things about the first season was the love triangle, particularly because the connection between Rick and Shane was so fascinating. Before the zombie apocalypse, they were police partners and best friends. Afterward, Shane saved Rick’s wife, Lori, from certain (walking) death, and in the process began a relationship with her while believing that Rick was dead. When Rick turns out to be very much alive, Lori ends her relationship with Shane, and neither of them tell Rick that they were together when he was gone. However, the tension between Lori and Shane, and between Shane and Rick (who is pretty much clueless during the first season, at least) is palpable. What was so awesome about it was the fact that the viewer knew what was going on when Rick did not, so all the interactions between the three characters were fraught with tension and had a fascinating subtext.

[END SPOILERS for The Walking Dead]

So, after reading the EW article I finally understood what my favorite kind of love triangle includes: an emotional connection between every branch of the triangle. And it doesn’t have to be romantic — in fact, I think it might work best if the connector between two points is not romantic. This is essentially love triangle (C) above, but it took that Walking Dead quote to really drive it home for me.

Which then made it much easier for me to recognize that one of my favorite love triangles is on The Vampire Diaries.

Elena is in love with Stefan and struggles with her feelings for Damon, while Damon and Stefan are brothers

The emotional connection between Stefan and Damon is not romantic (though some would argue with that); it is fraternal. But their brotherly love for each other is what makes this triangle work. It makes each brother want to sacrifice himself for the other, and that kind of love contrasts in deliciously complicated ways with the romantic love each feels for Elena.

This combination of love/sacrifice/betrayal/lust is what makes some love triangles, such as the Arthur-Guinevere-Lancelot one, endure for centuries.

And for the writer … well, I have to say that love triangles are really fun to write. So many possibilities! So little time.

Answering this question¹ requires thinking about writing at various different levels:

1. The idea stage
2. The drafting stage
3. The revision stage

Ideas

Let’s begin at the beginning. One of the most important decisions any writer makes is choosing the right idea to write about. The idea behind the story must do more than interest you (the writer); it must grab you by the throat and demand — forcefully, doggedly — that you tell that story.

The idea doesn’t have to grab everybody; it only has to grab the writer. It can be about anything, really, as long as you think it’s an amazing, fantastic idea. And it doesn’t have to grab you immediately. It could be kind of a slow burn idea. It might come to you on Monday, and then simmer a bit for a week or two or three. You’ll recognize it as a solid idea when it keeps coming back to you: when you think about it while brushing your teeth at night, or when you first wake up in the morning, or when you see something random on the street and think, that is in this story.

Then again, the idea could grab you right away. The book I’m working on right now grabbed me immediately. In fact, this is going to sound incredibly stereotypical, but I had a dream (I swear!) and I woke up knowing it could be the first chapter of a novel. I wrote down the dream immediately. For months it chased me around, coming back over and over while I was working on other things, until I knew that this one had to be the next book I wrote.

Lots of ideas can seem super exciting at first. That’s why I encourage you to wait before you jump in and start drafting a new novel based on a new idea. Wait a few weeks. See if it lingers. If it does, then think about it more actively. You might sit down at your desk and make some notes about it. See if you get bored with it after some noodling around on paper. See if your idea has legs and can stand up through a whole book — or if it peters out after an opening scene or two.

The thing to remember is: If you’re going to write a novel, you’ll be working on it for a long, long time. The central idea of your book had better be so fascinating to you that you want to think about it, on your own, inside and out, repeatedly, for what could be years.

I’m spending so much time focusing on the idea stage because I think most discouragement/lack of motivation can be avoided if you are working on the right idea. So, dedicate some time to this stage. Don’t rush into drafting until you’ve been living with the idea for a while. Remember that before you start writing, the idea is perfect because it’s entirely in your head. Enjoy that stage while it lasts!

Drafting

Discouragement while writing a first draft can be due to many things, among them:

• Your initial idea wasn’t big enough to last through a whole book.
• You’ve encountered writer’s block.
• You’d rather be doing something else.
• Your computer just died and you lost everything you recently wrote.

While that last one can be solved relatively easily (back everything up!), the other causes are trickier, and they are by no means the only things that can cause discouragement. But I think the main thing that causes discouragement during the drafting stage is the idea that writing a novel is an exciting, fun-filled, joyful experience full of blissful, genius inspiration and creativity. Any writer who sits down expecting this experience is going to be thoroughly disappointed and will probably want to give up.

In truth, writing can be like that, but usually only in brief bursts. Those moments of joyful creative genius come after long bouts of struggling with words and trying to puzzle out how the hell you can describe person A doing task C without being excessively dull. Now, I am a writer and I actually do love to write (I think most writers are masochists to some extent), but for years and years I struggled with discouragement because those moments of genius came so few and far between.

I’d have fabulous ideas and launch right into writing novels, and a few chapters in I’d come to a screeching halt when all the fun seemed to get sucked right out of the story. I’d struggle with continuing for a little while, but soon I’d give up.

In retrospect, I know why I gave up. Those story ideas weren’t exciting enough. The characters weren’t interesting enough. And I expected writing to be fun, because it used to be fun.

While I was a child and a teen, I loved to write. I wrote all the time. I wrote poetry, stories, dramatic diary entries, even three fantasy novels. Writing was freeing, and it also allowed me to escape into worlds that I could control. I don’t remember it ever being hard or boring or frustrating, and I think that’s because I wrote only for myself, without much intention of having it read by anyone else. (Being published was a dream so distant I just fantasized about it, the way you might fantasize about being an astronaut; I didn’t take many actual steps toward getting published.)

I know exactly when writing ceased being 100% fun and games for me: when I decided that I wanted to get published. This started sometime during high school, and from then on, the fun began to leak out of my writing. It was replaced by a generalized anxiety that basically suffocated my creativity.

In my late twenties, when I decided to try writing fiction again, I had to find my way through that anxiety to a new kind of writing experience, one in which I gave myself freedom to write anything and did not judge whether or not it was “good enough to be published.” It took me several years to reach that attitude. That meant a lot of false starts and a lot of giving up.

In my case, this is how I learned how to not get so discouraged that I wanted to give up:

• I chose to write a story that I’d wanted to write forever: a retelling of Cinderella.
• When I encountered things in life that forced me to stop writing for awhile, I tried to not beat myself up about not writing.
• When I felt ready to write again, I picked up from where I’d left off.
• I stopped expecting writing to be 100% fun and games.
• I didn’t give myself a deadline; I let myself take my time.
• I didn’t start other projects when things got difficult.
• I didn’t allow myself to think about getting published while writing the first draft. I wrote the story for me.

It took several years, but ultimately, I finished the first draft of my Cinderella story. (It became Ash.) After that, I knew that I could finish anything I wanted to, and that’s key: if I wanted. It’s in your power to finish a book if you want to. You are in control here. I know that a story can sometimes seem like it’s controlling you, but don’t be fooled. It’s not. You’re behind the wheel. It’s just that sometimes you encounter traffic or construction along the way, and it’s your task as a writer to not get so frustrated that you pull off the side of the road.

Have I taken that metaphor far enough yet? OK.

Revising

If you’ve already finished your first draft, congratulations! I’m someone who finds writing the first draft way harder than revising, so I think that once you’ve got that draft down, the hard part is behind you. But I know that lots of writers (including me!) also get bogged down during revision.

If you’ve never revised anything before, this can be a really tough thing to learn how to do. If you have the option to do so, I advise you to take a writing workshop somewhere, or find a critique group. This is the stage where you will be immensely helped by having other people read your work and offer suggestions on how to improve it. These readers can also be great cheerleaders, encouraging you to turn out the best story you can.

It used to be really hard to find critique partners or writing workshops, but the internet has made that so much easier. I’ve heard of many writers finding supportive critique partners at places like the Absolute Write forums and Verla Kay’s blue boards (for children’s and YA books). SCBWI and RWA also have great resources for writers looking for critique partners.

I think that if you have an idea of how to revise, you’re less likely to give up during revision. So I also recommend reading books about writing craft to help you hone in on how your manuscript might be improved. I recently read and highly recommend Cheryl Klein’s Second Sight. I’ve also enjoyed Donald Maass’ Writing the Breakout Novel and Stephen King’s On Writing.

Finally, revision is where all the really hard work of writing gets done. This is where your characters come alive on the page; this is where you make that setting three-dimensional; this is where you fill in those pesky plot holes. It can be grueling! And sometimes you just don’t want to do it anymore. I totally understand that feeling. Wouldn’t it be great if our books would just spring out of our heads fully formed, like Athena from the forehead of Zeus?

Yeah, it would be great, but that’s a myth (literally). No manuscript is ever perfect in the first draft. Even Jane Austen revised.

Pages from the manuscript for Jane Austen's "The Watsons," with revisions

So if you want to be a writer that other people want to read, you have to put in your time. I’m reminded of this well-known quote:

“Writing is easy: All you do is sit staring at a blank sheet of paper until drops of blood form on your forehead.” — Gene Fowler

It’s hard for everyone. But if you can stick with it², you will join the ranks of those crazy, masochistic loners who talk to themselves all day: You will be a writer.

Good luck!

1. I will note here that, as with all writing advice, take it if you like it, forget about it if you don’t. Writing is different for everyone.
2. And not everyone does — there is nothing wrong with you if you ultimately decide you don’t want to keep writing!

Brent handily encapsulated a whole mess of things I’ve been thinking about recently. (Edited to add: He also just sent me a link to this post he wrote about the Kidlitcon panel and his thoughts on diversity; it’s well worth a read.) Some of this is entwined with the wider discussion over the #YesGayYA situation, which prompted me to write last week’s post on the statistics about the state of LGBT YA publishing.¹ Some of this is entwined with discussions I had earlier this year during the Diversity in YA tour, when we were routinely asked questions like, “How do you write about diversity authentically?”

So, Brent’s tweet says it all. There is so much concern over authentic representations of minorities because there are so few of them. Nobody really worries about whether they’re being authentic in representing white, heterosexual people, because there are so many of those representations in the media.

But with minorities, we’re working with a small number of representations. So, among people who care about these things, there are debates about how to represent minorities authentically.

I hear this so much, but in my mind, authenticity is a ghost. You can chase it but you can never catch it. I talked a bit about this at the School Library Journal Day of Dialogue back in May, and promised months ago to blog about it later on, and well, it’s later on. Here are my notes on what I think about “authenticity.” (Warning: theoryspeak ahead.)

I wrote a thesis on authenticity as it relates to Chinese cookbooks for my master’s degree in cultural anthropology at Stanford. If you’re really interested, you can read it here. In this paper, I explored authenticity through a variety of disciplines, ranging from philosophy to cultural studies to anthropology.

I think my favorite analysis of authenticity comes out of existentialism, which I am not going to delve into deeply here, but very briefly: It’s arguable that the truly “authentic” can never be grasped. If you actually do grasp onto an authentic experience or situation, then it has already vanished.

I also thought about authenticity through the lens of poststructuralism, which allows me to view authenticity a construction. By “construction,” I mean a cultural construction², but you can also understand it as a physical construction. One example of the latter is a place like Colonial Williamsburg or any other historical reenactment theme park, which aims to deliver an “authentic” cultural experience to the tourist.

Colonial Williamsburg now includes African Americans

What I’ve just said is chock full of academic theory, but in normal everyday life, popular concepts of authenticity are much less specific. They seem to revolve around somewhat vague feelings of “realness,” combined with personal experience and a kind of gut-check emotional reaction. This is something that is difficult to discuss because it is so undefined.

So, when we’re discussing authenticity in relation to, say, representing minorities in young adult fiction (which is the broader discourse I’m participating in here), I think it’s more useful to talk about two concepts that are related to “authenticity,” but are much more specific: (1) anxiety; and (2) authority.

Anxiety — This is an anxiety over cultural boundaries, or marking out what defines a particular identity. You can see this in the question, What makes a “real” American?

Authority — In other words, who has the authority to declare that something is authentic? Or, when writing about the Other, who is authorized to do so? This is entangled in issues of power and appropriation.

I would much rather talk about anxiety and authority than debate who has an authentic voice, because:

• I don’t believe that the “authentic” is something that can be objectively measured. However, I think that most popular conceptions of authenticity do see it as something that can be measured; “the kung pao chicken at Eastern Garden is more authentic than at Hunan Delight,” for example. The problem is, this popular understanding of authenticity is actually a restrictive one. It draws a line around whatever is considered to fall within the bounds of “authentic” and keeps out whatever does not.
• The concept of one authentic identity/representation is problematic because cultures and traditions are not tightly bounded; they are fluid and many times hybrid. One Asian American’s experience of growing up in the US is not the same as every other’s.
• When we think about writing fiction, the idea of authenticity is often entangled with the idea of experience. “Write what you know,” etc. However, nobody expects a writer to go out and kill people before she writes murder mysteries.

All of this is pretty intellectual stuff, and it mostly applies to critiquing a cultural product, whether it’s a book or a TV show or a movie. What if you’re just a writer who wants to do a good job? In my opinion, that’s a different discussion, although it does touch on aspects of this critique.

Think of it this way: Human beings are infinitely varied in their experiences. No one is going to be identical to anyone else. Let’s say your main character is a Chinese American teen girl. She could have experiences that are totally different from 99% of the other Chinese American teen girls out there (for example, she could be some kind of psychic exorcist!), but that doesn’t mean those aren’t her own real experiences. They are authentic for her.

I say build your character the way he or she demands to be built, and try not to overly critique yourself in terms of whether or not you’re being “authentic.” At the same time, it’s a good idea to have an idea of what the broader context is, so that if your Chinese American psychic exorcist is totally unusual, you will know that she is, because she will also have to deal with that unusualness in her (fictional) world.

Make sense? What do you think “authentic” means?

1. There are some really interesting discussions in the comments, and I intend to revisit some of those issues, especially regarding gender, in the future, once I’ve had time to think about them more.
2. Something is a cultural construction when its definition varies from one culture to another. Concepts such as race, gender, and ethnicity are cultural constructions. An Asian person in the United States is seem differently than an Asian person in Asia.