I know, I've been out of touch for a while. That's pretty much my MO. I'm back tonight, though, and the reason is that writing here inspires me to write elsewhere and I just saw a clip of the second Divergent movie on Jimmy Fallon. Those books were so awful that I feel that, at some point, the girls of the world should read my YA work, not just shit (I know not all YA work is shit; I've read some very good YA). I'm tired of the girl always being the leader (hello, something I never thought I'd say); the girls in my short-story collection are in shitty situations, but they're just normal girls. They're what would any girl in the world would be like if her world fell apart around her. (Yes, they're post-apocalyptic; that's my jam. I know it's overdone.)
I want the girls who read my stories to see themselves. Some of them are fat. Some of them are skinny. Some have glasses and that's a problem in the new worlds in which they live. Some of them have allergies. It's not as if each girl has one of these, as some kind of avatar by which you can identify her; they're just regular, like regular people. Some people write regular people well, some people don't. I think it's one of my strong suits; trust me, my weak suits are too many to mention here. God knows my students give me enough material to work with; I may work in a small school, but it's like a microcosm. With just thirty girls, it's amazing what you can see. You also get to know them well enough to see their complexity. No one is just who they appear to be on the first day you meet them. And I guess what I really want to do with my writing is to show girls that I get them. I guess that's kinda dorky, but it's why I got into teaching. Because I remember acutely what it was like to be 16 and I know that if anything major had happened in the world when I was that age, I know I would have crumbled. The girls in my stories are the ones who would tell you, "I can't handle it. I can't live without my phone or my flat iron." But then they do. Because they are more than even they think they are. Isn't it silly, that we can see that stuff in other people, but rarely in ourselves?
I'm totally therapy-izing here. (I once went on a date with a psychiatrist, and I had to tell him to quit therapy-izing me. It was weird and gross. I don't go around trying to teach people Hamlet on dates.) I guess that's at least part of what this blog is about, therapy-izing myself a little bit. I hope it works! Fingers crossed.
Ugh, there is a commercial for the sitcom "One Big Happy" and of course the black nurse in the commercial is sassy. Talk about stereotypes. One of my stories is going to be about a black girl who is decidedly un-sassy.
Time's up!
