Why I don’t write YA

I have been lurking around the blogosphere, checking out all these amazing Australian writers whom I am now following on Twitter. I must say, some of them have very impressive blogs with lots of lovely pictures of book covers that bear their name. Their profile pictures are often quirky and their ‘About Me’ pages are lots of fun to read. The ones that seem to be most ‘edgy’ are the authors who write YA fiction.

Young Adult fiction is not a genre I have ever, ever contemplated writing. Last night I was pondering why that might be. I think I’ve come up with an answer that pretty much explains it all. It’s as simple as this: I didn’t enjoy being a teenager. I know a lot of people talk about teenage angst and probably most of us have at least some degree of relief that we are now able to look back on that period in our lives rather than live it every day, but I wonder if for me that relief is of a greater magnitude than most. Even today, if you want to set me on edge and get my nerves tipping off the Richter Scale, put me in a room full of teenage girls. Seriously. There is nothing quite so frightening for me as facing a gaggle of giggling, wide-eyed, adolescent girls. It makes me feel like I’m at a fish and chip party with seagulls…and I’m the only chip.

When I was a teenager, I wasn’t exactly stereotypical. Probably the single most important factor that set me apart from most was that I didn’t have this unquenchable desire to rebel against the establishment. Possibly the most rebellious thing I ever did was wear a trench coat to school for a term. (I still remember Mr Godfrey tut-tut-tutting at me in the hallway. I felt so rebellious at that moment…and was terrified!!) I loved school. I worked my butt off to do the very best I could. I got top marks. I played in the school orchestra. I was on the Senior 1st netball and softball teams. I was a school prefect. I loved the approval of adults, especially those adults that mattered to me. And I was a serious kind of kid. Maybe not serious. Earnest, perhaps. Not that I didn’t laugh a lot, but I thought about decisions seriously and put a lot of energy into thinking about what was the ‘right’ thing to do. I was (and am) an all-out Christian and in my state school that was OK but not exactly mainstream.  I rebelled by not doing what the other kids were doing. I didn’t drink (still don’t), I didn’t smoke (still don’t), I didn’t swear (still don’t) and I didn’t have sex (considering I’m now married, that would be sad if I didn’t!!). All that was common knowledge and fairly well accepted, but that didn’t stop me being a target. 

There was a girl at school (who shall remain nameless, but everyone who went to school with me will know EXACTLY who I’m talking about) who made a lot of people’s lives pretty miserable. She well and truly had it in for me, that’s for sure. From the very first day we met – which was at Year 7 Orientation Day before school even started – she took a dislike to me. From that day on and for the next 4 years, she took every opportunity to embarrass me, put me down or set me up. And although I like to think I never showed how much she got to me, she rattled me from the inside out. In my early 20s I ran into her at an airport and all those old emotions came rushing back like a tsunami.  

I know that it is a common experience for teenagers to feel like they don’t belong, and I was certainly no different from any others in that respect. But one of the main reasons I didn’t belong was because I had a personal commitment to do the ‘right’ thing. That’s not to say I wasn’t an out-and-out cow on occasions, and I’m sure I was quite condescending and arrogant at times too. But all in all, my heart was usually in the right place. I liked to fight for the underdog and champion those who couldn’t champion themselves. I had a big mouth and I could use it for good when necessary.

Although I had a small group of close friends (who stuck by me up until I dumped them for a teenage romance at 16 – they punished me for that one for quite a while), I didn’t ever feel like I really belonged with the greater mass of my peers at school, and to make matters worse I didn’t belong at church either. I grew up going to a very small church with just a handful of girls my age. One day, out of the blue, they all decided en masse that I was to be ignored, ostracised and otherwise treated as though I was invisible. To this day I’m not exactly sure what I did to cause this to happen. Probably nothing.

I came to the conclusion that my biggest blunder, according to my peers - and yet on reflection the best thing I ever did - was that I decided to be true to myself above all else. I don’t regret taking a stand for what I believed in, but those years were often lonely ones, even in my own family. My brothers certainly didn’t understand me. While they were both forces of teenage rebellion, I avoided conflict whenever possible. They hassled me for being a ‘goody-two-shoes’, gave me a hard-time for being an over-achiever and generally found me to be the most boring person on the face of the planet. I suppose the message I got loud and clear through that time from various places was that there was something wrong with me. The essence of ‘me’ was unacceptable. Is it any wonder that I break out into a cold sweat when I’m in a room of teenagers?

I guess it’s pretty clear why I don’t write YA fiction. Then again, maybe those experiences are the very reason that I should. What were your teenage years like? I’d love to know.