Week 8, YA and Ally Condie

Ah, YA, we meet at last. Yes, the culminating genre has arrived at last. I'm rather excited about work-shopping this section, though not for my own pieces of course, haha.

Anyway, last week we had the extreme pleasure of meeting with Ally Condie, author of the series Matched. Perhaps I was most excited about this because I actually, for once, knew who the visiting author was. I picked up Matched about a year or so ago and have eagerly awaited the subsequent volumes ever since. I'm a big distopia fan as we saw last week, you can generally get me to read almost anything in that genre without much cajoling.

Let me just say though, that Ally Condie is amazing. I felt like a little kid seeing her come in the room and listening to her, sitting in my seat like an adoring little fan, awed that she would descend to speak to us. Don't get me wrong, I've loved being present for all the other author visits and I have learned from each of them. The thing about Ally though [is it okay if I just call her Ally?] is that, somehow, she just seemed more real, more relate-able. We've hypothesized about why this is as a class. Perhaps because she is closer to us in age than the other authors have been, perhaps because she doesn't put on a presentation for audiences at this point in her career. I'm not sure we could ever really pin it down but there was just something that made me so eager to listen and left me feeling so empowered to write. Her history with writing made the whole process sound more possible and doable than it ever had before.

My absolute favorite piece of advice that she gave was that when you write, you should write to write the book or poem or article that you're thinking of. Don't write with publication in mind because that can be enough stress and pressure to crush any perfectly awesome story you might have to tell. I'm not sure why, but this kind of blew my mind. Each author we've talked to so far has mentioned bad first drafts, the idea that it's okay to write badly the first and even second times around, everyone [with very very few exceptions] does it and that's what revisions are for. I understood this and it has been a relief to realize the truth of that. Ally echoed this sentiment as well but the advice she tacked on somehow made the picture more complete for me. I can't say that I've become a writing fiend since then but I am much more optimistic about my ideas and projects now.

Okay, so when I last posted I was reading When We Were Friends. I have since finished the book and I'm not entirely sure what to think. I liked it, that much is true. Good writing for me is most easily evident when my emotions begin to echo those of the characters I'm reading about. The thing I'm not sure on is how I feel about the way things played out. The plot is such that a moral and ethical dilemma is placed before the main character and the reader alike and you may discover that you would not have chosen the same way or that you do not, in fact, know what you would do in such a situation and it's such an intense one that not knowing makes you somewhat uncomfortable. It makes you unable to pass judgement on the character or yourself really and I don't know too many people that really enjoy uncertainty. I would recommend the read if you're up for something intense :)

I was reading recently in Bird by Bird, a chapter about "looking around." Lamott talks about observing the world around you, especially trying it through the eyes of a child where everything is a wonder. She mentions how important it is to observe things and people around you, to really get a respect for those parts of life that you're trying to capture. You have to know yourself before you can explore someone else. My interest was especially peaked because she talks about nature and our surroundings the same way we often do in church, about being able to see the love of God in everything, even a plate of fish and rice. Especially on days like today with the beautiful fall colors and sunlight on the mountains, I resonate with that.

She talks about how we have to train our minds to see ourselves with that same love and respect that we almost naturally give others. She relates this training to potty training a puppy. For those of you who haven't had the pleasure of reading this section I will quote it: "Try looking at your mind as a wayward puppy that you are trying to paper train. You don't drop-kick a puppy into your neighbor's yard every time it piddles on the floor. You just keep bringing it back to the newspaper. So I keep trying gently to bring my mind back to what is really there to be seen, maybe to be seen and noted with a kind of reverence."

Sometimes we forget or ignore the fact that our minds can be trained, we are not doomed to think and see as we have thus far thought and seen. I know I for one could do much better at being observant and not having my eyes on the ground all the time. Lamott has a delightful sentiment about this self-absorption as well: "To be engrossed by something outside ourselves is a powerful antidote for the rational mind, the mind that so frequently has its head up its own [rear] -- seeing things in such a narrow and darkly narcissistic way that it presents a colo-rectal theology, offering hope to no one."

Words of wisdom with an awesome dose of humor :)

Okay okay, on to what I've written recently. This is a segment that I think I might use in my YA short story because it's really the first thing I've written that I think has the voice of one of my characters down pretty solidly.

Does anyone ever really end up where they think they will after high school? Everyone lists in the yearbook what they're going to do with their lives, who they're going to be. Isn't that like repeating the question every kid gets asked? "What do you want to be when you grow up?"

The only difference being that there are fewer princesses and vets in a group of eighteen year-olds.

It's a stupid question to begin with. I mean, when you're little it's kind of cute to hear the kids that want to be firefighters or bus drivers but it's down-right idiotic to ask teenagers. We're not that cute anymore and besides, why are people asking us what we want to be when we don't even know who we are?