Time to Step Up My Game
Happy belated Typing Tuesday, Gentle Readers! First thing’s first, news (in an unordered list!):
- I had a short story accepted with Aoife’s Kiss! Yay! The story is “Ageveline,” and it’s a sci-fi retelling of James Joyce’s “Eveline.” It was, in many ways, the source material for Daughter of Earth (though it’s so, so different from it; different girl, different generation ship). I’m psyched to share it with you. It’ll be appearing in the March 2012 issue.
- I’ve accepted an Articles Editor position with Strange Horizons . . . double yay! I’ve been proofreading for SH for over a year now, and I’m so excited to take on a more active role.
- I have a vlog up at the Interroblog! Listen to me babble about Pamela Sargent’s Seed series, and look at my adorable mug!
Now that that’s out of the way . . .
I’ve read some terrific books over the past year, as evidenced by the recommended reads visible over on my sidebar. A lot of them were entertaining, juicy stuff–fun SF like Across the Universe or exciting feminist fantasy like Diana Peterfreund’s Ascendant. But while these books entertained me–while they were fun and enveloping and exciting–four stand out in my mind as challenging me. When I talk to people about my genre, and why young adult is awesome, thankyouverymuch, and why it’s just as exciting, deep and artistic as anything you’ll find on the adult shelves, it’s these books that I recommend, again and again.
These books are Feed by M. T. Anderson, The Knife of Never Letting Go by Patrick Ness, How I Live Now by Meg Rosoff, and Liar by Justine Larbalestier. These four volumes are as different as they are similar. But they all challenged my own notions of what YA can, and should, be, pushing the boundaries of both kids’ fiction specifically and all fiction, generally.
It’s interesting: the one thing they all share is that they’re voicey YA. I don’t always like voicey stuff. I’m a hard sell when it comes to adults mimicking the voice of kids. Part of this is my own artistic sensibility (and, probably, my tendency to overwrite and go all flowery). But none of these books would work if they weren’t voicey–if they weren’t utterly immersive and framed within the limited world view of the narrators. And it’s fascinating to see how, rather than limiting the creations of these authors, the voicey perspectives allow them instead to do some daring, avant garde, and utterly exciting stuff.
Feed plays with form, and slang, and traps us within the uncomfortable perspective of a teenage boy who makes choices that few readers are likely to agree with. The Knife of Never Letting Go, while in some ways a traditional picaresque or boys’ adventure story, plays with language and font in a way that so utterly submerges you that you practically begin to feel you can read minds (and hear talking dogs) yourself. How I Live Now plays with form, too, and is recounted to us in such an honest adolescent voice that we find ourselves accepting the fantastic, terrible, frightening, and magical things that happen within its pages without even hesitating. And perhaps most impressively, Liar pulls the narrative rug out from beneath us completely. By making us a captive audience for a self-described liar, Larbalestier raises questions about the nature of storytelling itself.
All of these are genre novels. Now, if you know me, you know that that’s no pejorative. I’m a genre girl through-and-through, cut my teeth on McCaffrey and Lackey. I think there’s nothing easily dismissed about either science fiction or fantasy. But these books are so much more than what most people imagine when you say “science fiction” or “dystopian” or “magical realism” or “pseudo-contemporary-maybe-paranormal-I-think.”
By recounting these stories in accurate voices of real-sounding teenagers, these four authors create genre stories that you believe almost instinctively. The voice, grit, detail, and honesty make the unbelievable seem undeniable real.
If I sound slightly fangirlish as I say all of this, it’s because I am. This is the kind of writing that’s made me say that fiction is the closest thing we have to magic. There’s something amazing about an author that can make you believe in telepathy, among other things.
I said at the beginning of this entry that these books challenged me. That’s not to say that they were difficult to read–in fact, all four of these novels were insanely readable. Instead, they pushed the boundaries of what I thought is possible to achieve in either YA or fiction. It’s strange–I’ve read experimental novels before. And I used to write poetry, even dense, playful, speculative prose poetry. But I never really considered writing a novel this way.
And now I really, really want to.
I’m finishing up writing Daughter of Earth right now, editing and tightening and trying to make it the best book it can be. But I have to do that on its own terms, and I know it’s not a sprawling, messy, kooky, challenging, magical novel like one of these. But my next project? I think it’s going to be something special. I think it has to be.
This is why I think it’s important to read widely, to make sure that your reading pushes boundaries, to seek out books that make you feel freakin’ enthusiastic. Challenging writing makes us better. It pushes us to improve. It keeps us from getting complacent.
Time to step up my game.
Phoebe
Phoebe is a 20-something writer who lives in New York State with her husband and cat. She is a dork, not a geek or a nerd.
Her debut novel, Starglass, will be released from Simon and Schuster Books for Young Readers in Summer 2013.
12 comments
seek out books that make you feel enthusiastic. so well said.
that's the pattern. read amazing writing – feel jealous – feel challenged to step it up – get excited about that challenge – toil away – see our own writing has improved – silently thank the authors who challenged us.
I have trouble with the silently thanking part, as you can see.
I strongly approve of this post.
Also I still haven’t read Feed. Isn’t there some zombie novel (or something) with the same name? Because every time I type ‘Feed’ into Amazon, that’s what shows up :/
Yeah, there is. Get the MT Anderson one (it's older, so I'm guessing it should be available). It'll probably take you about an hour to read, and I bet you'll get all sorts of choked up while doing so.
Good post!
I tend to not like voicey books. How I Live Now was an exception. So I think I don’t mind intelligent voices. Percy Jackson? The voice reveled in all things common = gross. Whereas How I Live Now had a snobbery. Liar seemed kind of, “Hey man, I’m just normal yo” in the Percy Jackson vein, although I didn’t get very far into it. But The Knife of Never Letting Go was good.
It’s all pretty personal, isn’t it.
I think your tolerance of/liking for ‘voiciness’ (that’s the technical term for it, obviously) is very much a matter of taste. I tend to be okay with a lot of voicy YA, but voica adult fiction often drives me up the wall – particularly when the author is enamored of their own intelligence and decides that hey, if James Joyce was too good for punctuation, so are they.
I’ve never heard of The Knife of Never Letting Go, though. Of course, now I’m buying it.
I loved this post. When I read books like these, ones that challenge the way I think about storytelling, they either make me want to push myself in my own writing or stop trying because I’ll never be that brilliant. Thankfully, so far I’ve only ever pushed myself harder.
I’ve never heard of The Knife of Never Letting Go, though. Of course, now I’m buying it.
Every time somebody says that, I want to go off on a rant about Goodreads. ATTENTION INTERNET: YOU'RE TALKING ABOUT THE WRONG BOOKS.
You'll like it, I think. Everyone should like it
Because it's awesome.
And I have a similar reaction to truly great writing. The Knife of Never Letting Go was one of the few instances where I got truly jealous of another writer's ability – I remember getting through the initial few chapters (where you're hit over the head with one awesome thing after another) and thinking, in a genuinely disheartened way, 'I couldn't write something this inventinve'. Another one is What I Was, which is Meg Rosoff's third book (I think). It does certainly things brilliantly, and I tend to feel jealous of that every time I read it.
It's definitely pushed me to try harder, though.
I think this is a good example of how jealousy isn’t always a bad thing, Sean! It can help us become EVEN MORE AWESOME.
I think it's easy to despair out of jealousy or competitiveness–but it's also not a very productive use of one's time! Much better to challenge those feelings into improvement in your own art.
I hope you like The Knife of Never Letting Go! It's a really exciting book.
My number one criteria for buying new books is that something in that first paragraph or first page says, "Here is a human being who is worth spending time with — here is a human being who has something interesting to say." So, no surprise that I have read and loved all four of those.
What I love about these books is the distance between who these characters are and who they think they are, the distance between what they know about themselves and what they reveal about themselves in their own words. There's an instant emotional closeness and at the same time it creates the distance to step back and evaluate what's going on — what we understand that the character can't understand.
(Have you read Boy Proof by Cecil Castellucci? My favorite of her books and a perfect example of this.)
I haven't! I'll definitely look it up, Emily. Thanks for the suggestion!
What I love about these books is the distance between who these characters are and who they think they are, the distance between what they know about themselves and what they reveal about themselves in their own words. There’s an instant emotional closeness and at the same time it creates the distance to step back and evaluate what’s going on — what we understand that the character can’t understand.
I love this. Beautifully said.