Friday 13 February 2009

Why Write

Why write? This is my reply:

Computers, spell-checkers, auto-correct, and editing software have certainly made writing a novel much easier. Thankfully, though, there is still no substitute for talent, and you still need the discipline for the hard day-by-day slog.

I started writing a novel as a challenge I could undertake with a laptop during the downtime when I commute (two 20 minute slots per day). I had no idea whether I had the staying power to make it even to the end of the first draft. Five re-writes, three years, and a lot of editing later, I am finished.

I don’t expect it to find a publisher, but I will try anyway, because that is the next logical step in bringing the characters alive – who knows, it may be just what the publishing industry is craving and I may yet see it in print.

I’ve now started a second novel with a much better idea of where I’m going, what I’m doing, how to do it, and what the market wants. I reckon this second novel will take me only two years and only three re-writes. This time the first six months will involve a lot more planning than writing.

Why a second novel? I’ve got the bug now. I’ve created one novel so I can legitimately call myself a writer, now I want to get published so I can call myself an author. Besides, what do you do after the first novel, just give up? Let my characters die off? They are great characters, I want them to live in other people’s minds as well as my own, and for that to happen I need to create a novel for them which publishers want to sell.

The following comment set me thinking, ‘If you ask most dedicated Young Adult (YA) authors why they write for teenagers, they're likely to tell you it's because they continue to think like adolescents.’ Is this why I write for the children? To some extent is it, but it’s not the whole story.

I write to entertain, myself and others, and teenage characters have a much greater capacity for fun than their adult counterparts. With all the responsibilities that come with adult-hood fun just seems to fall off the radar. Adult books, even if they are have child protagonists, are meant to look at the struggles of life, love, relationships, looking back on the effects of growing up. etc. They are expected to be serious, weighty or follow pre-set formula of a genre. By writing about teenage characters, for a teenage audience, I can escape from all those constraints and just write cross-genre entertaining novels that are fun.

There is another aspect to this, of course, do I have the maturity and ability to write about adult issues? The answer is yes. But why should I? I don’t, at the moment, have the desire to write adult material. I prefer to write about the adventures and heroes that fill my mind, and they are best expressed in the form of teenage protagonists.

J.K.Rowling, of course, has changed the rules with Harry Potter – now the teenagers grow up and face all the angst and issues that Enid Blyton avoided. Can anyone write a series about child characters without them growing up – I suspect not.