Write What You Lived

Back in my bookseller days we had a long discussion in the break room one night about what distinguished a teen lit novel about teenagers and an adult lit novel about teenagers. I don’t remember what my answer was though I do remember agreeing with that much of it had to do with tone and topic. Authors write teenage lit for teens and thus assume a teenage voice throughout. I have a whole string of Oscar rants planned now that the nominations have been announced so for now I’ll quickly point out that Young Adult was robbed. The movie is about many things but one plot point is how the main character handles the creative process of being a ghost writer for a popular series of teen books. Some of this involves overhearing what actual teenagers around her are saying and transcribing it almost verbatim into her book. There’s also a fair amount of arrested development on her part that allows her to tap into the teenage psyche but I don’t want to presume or in any way give the impression that I think all or any actual teen lit authors are like that.

Adult lit about teenagers is a little different. There’s a heaviness attached and an nostalgia. I recently finished a book where the main character was a high school student and there were long passages that did nothing more than transcribe the confusion and panic simple, everyday occurrences can inspire at that age. Some of the books I’ve read in this particular sub-genre have been very good and some haven’t. They’ve all been a little uncomfortable. I’ve often said that the best book I could write would be one loosely based on the couple of summers I spent working at a small, local movie theater. It would very much be a book for adults because the decade plus some that’s passed has painted the whole experience with a sentimental, poignant, somewhat painful brush. I can write what’s it like to be a teenager but I don’t think I can write like a teenager anymore. I even wonder if I could write it so that anyone else would connect with the story or if it’s all too personal.

I didn’t connect with the last book I read for this very reason [sidenote: I'm not being cagey about the book, it's easy to figure out if you look at my Goodreads widget in the sidebar. I just don't want this entry to feel specifically like a book review.]. It felt too much like I was reading someone’s actual diary with random pages ripped out that left me scrambling to fill in the blanks. We all have bits that would make a great story but that for whatever reason we kept away from the world’s consumption but in this case the author not sharing those left me wanting.