El Andalous - Back to Writing

Lofty Thoughts!

I’m really into my writing at the moment. When I first returned to Egypt, I was so busy and felt a bit frustrated that I wasn’t able to get down to any of the things I’d planned to do (learn Arabic, write, read). So maybe because I’d felt deprived, I was all the more keen when I finally settled and had time.

I’m finding writing pretty similar to swimming. I know all the theory about what I’m supposed to do, but do I actually do it? The answer, of course, is No. What’s stopping me? I have no idea.

But at least I know it’s not just me. I was reading this person’s blog who runs a writing course. She was saying how she kept on telling one of her students to be specific in her descriptions – so, for example, rather than just write “car”, use “Volkswagen Beetle” – but this student for some reason just couldn’t do it. Time and time again, she’d write “car” or “food” or “tree”.

Everyone’s a bit blind to their own mistakes, of course. In Space Shapes (or maybe the title will be Where the Magic Lies, or maybe it’ll change again…), my main character has several instances where she thinks she knows what someone else is thinking, but she’s wrong. In a similar, but different, fashion, I was convinced that (apart from one character where overuse of names is deliberate), my characters were only using each other’s names where they’d usually be used. But two of my beta-readers thought I was over doing it. When I looked again, with different eyes, I realized they were right. And this was despite the fact that I’d already gone through the manuscript and “corrected” some of this overuse before I gave it to them. I’d obviously not been quite objective enough with myself when I did so to see the errors properly.

The manuscript is out with some test readers, too, at the moment (ie, teenagers, since it’s a young adult [YA] book). I’m a bit petrified, of course, since if they don’t like it, that’s the book down the pan. But the more I read online, the more I think the whole young adult genre is a bit of a mess. For a start, I find it strange that an age range should be regarded as a genre, but let’s forget that.

I’ve read at least two strings of conversation where adults have been complaining about the explicitness of some of the YA books that are out there. I saw a quote from one book and I was shocked! There were even teenagers contributing to the thread and complaining about the number of books portraying them as having sex and drugs the whole time. One person claimed that pervs hung around the YA section of the bookstore, because it was like porn and they needn’t hang round the porn section. A few were requesting that books be classified according to content (a bit like films, I guess).

Of course, there are plenty of YA books not like this at all, but I suppose the problem for parents is knowing which ones they would regard as okay for their children to read. It’s a personal matter, of course, as to how much you feel you still need to “protect” your children once they’re at YA age.

On top of this, I had a few friends asking if their <13 year olds could act as test readers (I’d stated that my book had no sex or violence). I agreed, interested to see how they’d find it (they have been the quickest to read and provide feedback, all my late teens are very busy and seem to be delaying). I got positive feedback from them.

But that raises a whole load of other questions. There’s no way my book would be classified as middle grade. But children mature at different times and reading capacity differs widely too. So, if a ten year old can understand YA literature with no problem, what happens if a ten year old starts browsing the YA section and the more explicit books? Am I being too prudish?

This also made me agonise over the use of expletives in my book. I only have one very mild swear word, but I’m not sure I’d have used it if I thought my readership might be as young as 10 years old. Then I saw a teacher saying she wouldn’t put anything on her summer reading list that had swear words; she was excluding a very well-reviewed YA novel because it had a total of four swear words (very mild ones). I was surprised, but it’s enough to make me remove the only one I have. Some might criticize my book now for being unrealistically “clean”. But at least one literary agent I saw was looking for “clean teen” submissions.

Anyway, it’s an interesting journey, and it’s easier to rant about the publishing industry needing to adapt itself rather than to focus on my own mistakes. I’m sure I’ll get enough pointers on my errors from my test readers (thank you so much in advance, if you happen to be reading!!).