Yesterday, I read the second book in a series by a teenager. According to the backcover bio, she began writing the first book in the series at 13, and she's sixteen now. The book isn't awful. In fact, it's not bad. Lots of typical errors of the young, like choppy sentences, repetitive structure, extremely casual description -- hey! it sounds like a teenager! And I think young teenagers would go for it: vampires, elves, cold queens, hot knights, no explicit sexual references, plenty of action and everyone spats like high school.
Whoever was behind this project -- her parents, her teachers -- was paying attention to adolescent motivation. My twelve-year-old, for example, a few times a year starts these big story ideas. The last one actually had an outline and ran about thirty pages. But no, it's not done. None of them get done. And that's my fault because I'm not supplying a solid enough reason to motivate him to finish.
Maybe the standard principle of always finishing something you start is good enough for baseball or track, but the difference between a sports season and a writing project is the party, the awards ceremony, the public accomplishment.
Writing is different. Writing is all about personal achievement, inner strength, sitting alone in a room for hours and hours. So what if your mom reads every word and thinks you're wonderful? That's just not the same as a medal hung around your neck in front of hundreds of cheering fans. (Or, the desire to be the kid who gets the medal hung around his neck in front of hundreds of cheering fans.)
Not that I want to encourage grown-up writers to expect or desire swooning adulation. Heck, fine words from Mom would be great. Remember, it's all about personal achievement, inner strength, blah blah blah.
But kids are different. A little bit different. Just like reading really great books to your kid will motivate him to become a reader, treating his hard work as a writer with fanfare will encourage him to keep sitting alone in that room, working at getting better.
And so we're back to the parents of the teenaged vampire novelist. Again, whoever was behind her was right on track. How many kids quit reading for pleasure at the age of 11 or 12, when they make the switch from elementary school to middle school? Why not encourage kids to write, read and critique each other's work.
No, this is not a school project. This is only for kids who really like to write and read, but often get caught up in more instantly gratifying activities. This is a project for parents to encourage, critique, encourage again through rewrites and research, help with editing, etc. At the end, publish the book.
The author I read yesterday published through AuthorHouse, I like to use Lulu because they're more hands on and you can print one or a hundred or a thousand.
But the vampire novelist's mentors were even smarter than this: they encouraged the girl to write the first book of a series. Book One was about 130 pages (large type, large leading -- typical y/a format), the second slightly longer. But hey, there's no reason why your kid's first book could be twenty-five pages or less. Why not?
Beware: Here's the one single largest problem with this second book that I read yesterday: she started exactly where she'd left off, as if I'd already read the first book, which I hadn't.
Everyone, including J.K. Rowling, starts a new book in a series with a little starter-course for those who jump in cold. (Actually, J.K. Rowling did this up until the second to last book, at which point she must have decided that her new readers would start at the beginning.) There are lots of different ways to go about this, and lots and lots of series to glean for ideas. But, it must be done. I still don't really know why the vampires were the good guys, which seemed important in the context of the second book.
Finally, publishing sites like Lulu and AuthorHouse should take advantage of teen writers by placing their books in special, browsable sections where like authors can easily order their books, read them and make comments. What a great idea!



