Sex and YA Novels

By Jenny Ramaley

A  few weeks ago, some of us Route 19 Writers gave ourselves an assignment: write a sex scene.

(not porn, mind you, but a literary scene with story, character, etc.)

         Huh?, you might be thinking. Don't most of you write for children?

         Yes.  But Carol is working on an adult murder/mystery/suspense/thriller and we were encouraging her to raise the 'steamy' level in some of her scenes where the characters were peeling off various layers of clothes. "Hey," she protested. "It's not that easy. You guys should try it!" And being a supportive group, the rest of us, even the picture book gals, thought, "Yeah, this would be a good experience, a challenge that will loosen up our writing."

         Long story short, we had a blast one evening drinking wine and reading each other's stories out loud. Overall, group members surprised themselves. We produced good stories, rich in character and setting, where the physical act meant something – whether it was misguided love, first kisses, pure lust or corporate climbing.

         The project was especially useful for those of us who write YA novels because sooner or later we're faced with a physical situation in our stories. Whether a character suppresses his or her desires or tries to satisfy them, most teens have raging hormones. Because of our 'assignment', I spent some time picking through YA books to see how different authors handle sex in their stories.

               

         First I turned to Gossip Girl. Although written in 2002 by Cecily von Ziegasar, the concept was brainstormed and controlled by Alloy Entertainment. The book morphed into a well-known print and TV series with a reputation for copious amounts of drugs, alcohol and sex. The story focuses on a group of neglected rich New York teens and drips with sexual innuendo. But if you really study the book, there's a lot more talk than action, and when there is actual action, it's barely mentioned.

         Here's the scene where Serena has sex for the first time with her old friend Nate, who is also her best friend's boyfriend:

They both had sex for the first time. It was awkward and painful and exciting and fun, and so sweet they forgot to be embarrassed. It was exactly the way you'd want your first time to be, and they had no regrets.

         If you ask me, that sounds pretty vague. And tame.

         Compare that scene with another first-time experience and young love found in Forever, the YA book written by Judy Blume in1975:

I whispered "Are you in . . . are we doing it?"

"Not yet," Michael said, pushing harder. "I don't want to hurt you."

"Don't worry . . . just do it!"

"I'm trying, Kath . . . but it's very tight in there."

"What should I do?"

"Can you spread your legs some more . . . and maybe raise them a little?"

"Like this?"

"That's better . . .much better."

         Due to its explicit, almost clinical, physical scenes, I can't help but wonder if this story would be published in today's conservative anti-sex-education world. Marcy said this book has been hard to find in recent years, although it's still highly sought after. Apparently, when a library gets a copy, it often disappears. I found my copy on a shelf at Target a few weeks ago, so someone in retail land is recognizing the demand and putting it back in stores. Isn't it interesting that a book first published in the '70s still has an audience?

         Although our pop culture is drenched with sex – think MTV rap videos, Jersey Shore and a relentless avalanche of sexy advertising -- teenagers still seem to covet information about the nuts and bolts of sex from sources other than reality TV, Glamour magazine, and weird stuff on the internet. Carefully crafted YA books that deal with the subject of sex, openly, honestly, with the pros and cons of these decisions worked into the stories, can help fill this need.

         I wonder if any teens will be searching for Gossip Girl 36 years from now.

Planting Ideas

This past weekend I went through my usual May ritual of planting a row of annuals in my backyard.  However, when I woke up this morning and went outside to check on my garden not a single flower was to be seen. I could only surmise that in the dark of night a cagy critter had feasted on my newly planted geraniums, impatiens and petunias. Finding ideas for stories is somewhat like planting a garden. A seed of an idea germinates in our minds. It may stem from something we read in the newspaper or overheard on a crowded bus. Perhaps a photograph catches our eye and begs to tell a story. Sometimes it’s a childhood memory or a mysterious neighbor. So here are a few wacky titles (and some you might recognize) for a book based on an event as mundane as my missing annuals.

1.  The Garden Thief

2. Gone With The Petunias

3. The Critter Runner

4. Weed, Pray, Love

5. The Lincoln Gardner

6. The Little Critter That Could

7. Oh, The Gardens You’ll Weed!

8. A Petunia In Time

9. Plant Two Geraniums

10. Harry Planter And The Garden Hollows

Please feel free to add to this list!

Conferences and Your Wallet $$$$

by Carol Herder

I’m a reclusive writer. I’ve designed a study I love, where I hole up and create story. Unfortunately, I can’t reenact the Bronte sisters’ lives. Sometimes I must venture out into the big bad world. One of those occasions is when I attend the annual Pennwriters Conference held in Pittsburgh, PA this past weekend.

This year, for the first time, I splurged. I spent upwards of $500. When I mentioned this sum to my critique group yesterday, one of colleagues gasped. Very audibly. Yes, many of you are now convinced that I’m totally insane. But I’ll have you know, I’m not. I know this because on Friday morning I attended Brent Maguire’s Psychoses & Psychopaths workshop.

In addition to attending the Friday through Sunday conference I also signed up for Ramona Long’s Thursday workshop, Mastering the Art of Self-Editing, where I learned new tricks to polish my manuscript. Packed with valuable information, I rushed my bathroom breaks to minimize losing any of Ramona’s words of wisdom.

Going to conferences is expensive, but for a writer intent on furthering her craft there is no better way to network and glean new information. Pennwriters does a wonderful job organizing a conference with a solid mix of workshops for beginners, more advanced writers, and progressive workshops for today’s exciting environment.

Thinking it would be a beginners workshop I nearly skipped, The First Page is the Worst, by Jason Jack Miller & Heidi Ruby Miller. But their no-nonsense approach to including “the promise” our first pages must deliver had my creative mind on fire.

Another favorite, Creating a Low-Budget Book Trailer, with novelist Gwyn Cready and filmmaker Mike Marsh, got me thinking about marketing in a new way. And their ideas on saving money and still getting a product that will stimulate book sales had me thinking I might make back that $500!

As well as the workshops there is the free 10-min pitch session with an agent of your choice. Nerve-wracking, but I promise, it gets easier each year. Another stomach-clenching event is the Friday night critique in your genre. This event is worth the possible migraine and sweat-inducing jitters. I spent my evening in the Thriller/Mystery room with author CJ Lyons and agent Barbara Poelle, and got fantastic feedback on my first-page and synopsis.

On Saturday night I slipped on a pair of high-heels and forced myself out of my hotel room to the cocktail party and dinner with the local Sisters in Crime chapter. At the cocktail party I did finally talk about something other than writing, but at the dinner, as we lingered over coffee and dessert the conversation turned to MFA programs. Does a writer need an MFA? I don’t know, but the conversation was another example of the limitless opportunities to exchange information with writers facing the same challenges.

Lastly, conferences produce pages of notes to take home and share with your colleagues. One such nugget I shared is agent Barbara Poelle’s excitement over YA fiction. Two of my best friends are completing YA manuscripts with multi-faceted girl hero’s I’ve come to love. Jenny Ramaley’s tough-girl character, Shay, in her novel entitled, The Disappearance of Dragonflies, is about a brilliant teen struggling with a terrible home-life and what she believes is a dead-end future. From the first page, I identified with Shay and her drive to succeed. Another exciting YA manuscript is Marcy Collier’s paranormal story, Plainly Gifted. In addition to having the normal teenage challenges, Jamie must learn to control a gift she never knew she had. When the “gift” starts to surface, Jamie finds a world with layers she never dreamed existed.

I don’t know if my friends will submit to Ms. Poelle, I don’t even know if my own pitch with agent Dennis Little will produce results. But I know I will write a better first page, my psychopath killer will be a more believable character, and my overall manuscript will have a polish it never had before.

So, was it worth slinking out of my comfort zone and mingling with other creative minds? Was it worth $500? You bet! Every single penny.

Mother Knows Best

MOTHER KNOWS BEST

posted by Andrea Perry

     Of all of the things that I ever wanted to be when I grew up:  a nun, teacher, drummer, The Girl from U.N.C.L.E., interior decorator, Miss America, speech therapist, super model, librarian, and Stevie Nicks back-up singer - children's author never made an appearance on my list.  As a matter of fact, the notion of such a thing was not even mentioned until I was 35.  At the time, I was an at-home mom raising two toddlers.  I had degrees in psychology, education, and rehabilitation counseling and had worked for a number of years as the director of placement and housing for recently discharged state hospital patients.  So imagine my surprise when out of the blue one day my mother suggested I take a course in writing for children.  " I don't think you realize that you have a gift," she said.  "For talking on the phone, brushing my hair, and changing diapers at the same time, maybe, " I replied, "but that's about it."  Her evidence for making such a suggestion, she claimed, was that I had always written little rhymed ditties inside the cards I mailed to friends who were getting married, graduation, moving, or taking new jobs. And I had also won the grand prize in two recent writing contests hosted by Kaufmann's where I had to describe married life in one, and why my husband and I deserved a cruise to Bermuda in another.  "The craziest thing I ever heard," I believe I may have said. So convinced was I that she was so completely wrong, that I actually enrolled in the class to prove my point.  And getting out of the house for one evening a week for 12 weeks did sound rather inviting.  

Well, the rest is history.  Truth be told, I haven't quit my day job. Yet. But I have been lucky enough to publish three picture books.  My life as a children's author has been full of ups and downs, rejections and acceptances, and I continue to evolve, writing and rhyming away, still not knowing what the future holds, but loving it and knowing she was right. How did my mother know? I have no idea.  But I'm glad she did.

Writer's Block vs Writer's Flood

As I watch the stream in my front yard spilling over, I think of one of the biggest challenges I faced when I started writing. This problem plagued me for years. Writer's Flood. I had so many ideas and flashes that it was difficult to stay on target. Characters ran away with tangents. Tangents turned into spillways. Plot holes deepened. My stories remained on the surface because I was so frantic treading water. We are talking waste water and I was up to my neck in it. I just had too many ideas and too many things distracted me.

I'd get into that creative whirlpool and while working on one story I'd wake up only to find a new story on my pillow. I hemorrhaged story. If you asked me "What is this story about?" I'd choke on all the ideas buzzing in my brain.

Learning to keep task on track has been a decade of struggle, but now I can do it. Picture my process as a stove top. On that stove top I have two burners in the front with two big soup pots bubbling away. Those are the two I'm allowed to work on. The next row back has three burners. These pots have lids on them. I'm allowed to take the lid off, throw in some spice, but that's it, then the lid goes shut and I have to finish one of the two up front. There's a third row back with four burners. I can only whisk off the lid, put in a little salt, and that lid gets slammed shut.

I told my agent (who sadly passed away) about this and she laughed and told me not to tell anyone about this. "Why?" I asked. "Because not too many people will understand this. You're high creative." I assured her I didn't smoke any of THAT and again she laughed. She repeated her caution and told me to be patient, that she was certain I'd get the tiger by the tail.

Getting my MFA has helped because it helped me deepen my ability to focus on character. Something else that helps even now is to find a favorite book and type into my computer the opening chapter. It's almost like doing warm-up exercises. It slows my popcorn brain and channels some of that excitement.

Someday perhaps I'll write about writer's block. Maybe.
But trust me, writer's flood can be just as much of a disaster. This morning when I woke up there was a girl sitting there and she told me her name was Harley Ryder. She lives in a trailer court. Her parents love motorcycles and she loves books. She's searched the trailer looking for adoption papers but hasn't found them. Yet.
She's on the fifth row back in a small stainless steel pot. The lid is on tight.

Brave New E-Publishing

We sometimes like to think otherwise, but publishing is a business. That’s not a bad thing, or a good thing, it’s just a thing.

If you are trying to earn money through writing, then you’re a business (if you’re not trying to earn money, then you’re either a poet or possibly a children’s writer and you have my sympathies). I’ll leave it up to you whether you’re a good thing or a bad thing.

I’m in business. The hardest thing to do is to get and keep customers. You can pay other businesses to do it, or do it yourself, in-house. If you pay other businesses, they may be better at it than you are, but they’re not doing it out of charity for you. Let’s say you make widget-toys and you get Widgets-R-Us to sell them for you. If kids stop buying your widgets, the store is not going to keep selling your widgets because they think there’s a chance you’ll come up with a new best-selling widget, or because they think your widgets are good for kids. On the other hand, if you try to sell your widgets yourself in your own store, you’re going to have less time and $$ to make the widgets in the first place.

But here’s the thing: people aren’t going to widget stores as much anymore. So a bunch of them are closing. And Widgets-R-Us might go bankrupt.

Writers have one thing to decide. What’s the best way to connect with customers?

The answer might be many ways. Or one way now and another way later. Things are changing. Keep your eyes open. You could find yourself drowning in a mud puddle, or maybe…Singing in the Rain.

Unagented Again

I hate to make people wait. The thought that someone has put some aspect of their life on hold for me, while I do whatever it is they're waiting for me to do, feels burdensome. I realized last week that I've been carrying that feeling around with me for a long time and it was getting heavy. Maybe I didn't know it then, but now that it's gone, I feel lighter.

I've had an agent for many years. I remember the day he took me on as a client. I couldn't believe it. I was ecstatic. It was the next best thing to selling a manuscript. And I bought into the myth that landing an agent is almost harder than landing a publishing contract, something that agented (but unpublished) writers like to believe. I loved that myth, too. It made me feel better, somehow, like all I had to do now was back-pedal a little, the hardest part was over. I don't know how many times I said to people, "Oh, yeah, it's actually harder to get an agent." It was a cocky thing to say. But it fit the way I was feeling. And then, to top it off, I would add, "He's in New York.". I think I said it so many times over the years that I started to convince myself I was almost done.

After a third rewrite of a third novel my agent began waiting. He was waiting for the fourth novel that I promised him I was half finished with. I've been half finished with it for years. And I knew he was waiting for me to be done because I was waiting for me to be done. Every week that I didn't write, I knew we were both waiting. I guess he finally decided he'd waited long enough. I don't blame him. I know how he felt.

We had some success. My rejections were, for the most part, great. I had a few requested rewrites of a few novels and each time really believed I'd nailed it. And, although editors "really enjoyed reading Mrs. McDowell's story" and thanked us for letting them, no one ever actually bought it. It takes more than liking, loving, enjoying, admiring to sell your work. It takes something special, at a special point in time. And it's all hard.

So, my life as an agented writer is over. Though I'd expected to be as devastated at the end as I was ecstatic at the beginning, I'm actually fine with it. I have the freedom to do with my work as I please, which may be something fun and exciting or nothing at all. But at least I know no one is waiting. And that feels good.

Fran McDowell