YA Mythbusters

Okay, let's face it--a lot of books and movies don't accurately address teenage life. Like, I, for one, have never hit my head on a chandelier while drunk-dancing, which unfortunately means that I haven't been caught by a conveniently-placed Heath Ledger, either (womp). So let's examine a few of the misconceptions, shall we?

• Bullying isn't as bad as it used to be.
• *DISCLAIMER: My concept of "used to be" is drawn almost exclusively from nineties chick flicks.* Bullying is different, sure. It's needling. In a lot of cases, it's subtle. Lots of passive-aggressiveness, gossping behind backs, snide remarks followed by "Ehmahgawd, I'm just kidding! Lighten up!" Honestly? I've seen two primary kinds of bullying:
• First: within cliques. You fall in with a group of people, and you let them step all over you and talk down to you. So that they'll like you. So that you'll have someone to sit by at lunch. You swallow their crap, you wake up the next morning and do it all over again, and eventually, you forget how to stand up for yourself. Or why you should.
• Second: there are certain kids that a grade or an entire school will mark as "okay" to bully. Maybe they're not good in social situations. Maybe they don't shower as often as everyone else. Maybe the committed some stupid faux pas in middle school and people still won't let go of it. Whatever the reason, these kids get bullied. Their classmates bully them, and the worst part is, they don't recognize it as bullying it. Once, I confronted one of my friends about her stupid comments to a kid in band, and she replied, "Oh, come on. Look at him. He brings it all upon himself." Hell, even the teachers do it.
• Example: there was this story a while ago about a group of kids that voted someone unpopular onto a dance court, and how the school/community wouldn't stand for it. It was a beautiful story, but why was that news? Because it's rare. At my school, they've voted someone unpopular onto basically every dance they've held since my freshman year, and our administration barely even addresses it. It's horrible and disgusting and people don't think twice about playing a prank like that, because your part is so small. One click on the computer next to someone's name. You laugh. They don't. You don't ever think of yourself as the antagonist in a story. We are not villains. We are not heroes. We are hormonal. Sometimes we make mistakes, and sometimes we don't. 

VERDICT: BUSTED

• Cliques aren't as bad as they used to be.
• I have a friend who puts it like this: "They tell us not to label, but we can't help it. We put people in categories--it's biological. We label and then everyone tells us that labeling is bad, so we lie and say that cliques don't exist." To be clear, it isn't like Mean Girls. It isn't like there are the cool Asians and the nerds and the jocks, and no one intermingles. But there are definitely friend groups, and since my school is a very athletic-oriented one, most of them were formed around the teams you were a part of. And there's definitely a social hierarchy.
• But then again, I've heard from friends at bigger schools that say that the social structures aren't as rigid as they used to be. It definitely depends on who you ask.

 VERDICT: I DON'T EVEN KNOW

• Teens are lazy.
• Here is a typical day for me:
• 4:30 a.m. Wake up, write (this has been more sporadic this year, because damn, my bed is comfortable. And you could argue that most teens don't get up to meet a deadline. But a lot of sports teams have morning practices, and some classes are held during zero period. There's not a lot of sleeping in).
• 6:30 a.m. Start getting ready for school: last minute homework, morning routine, etc (this also varies. Like, at the beginning of this year, my morning routine was pretty standard: makeup, hair, and so on. I gave myself a break on No Makeup Mondays and Sweatpants Fridays. Now it's No Makeup Everyday and I'm lucky if I wear real pants twice a week).
• 7:45 a.m. Get to school, go to the coffee shop, etc.
• 7: 55 a.m. - 3:10 p.m. School. There might be a study hall in there if you're lucky.
• 3: 10 p.m. - 6:30 p.m. After-schools. Sports practices (though during tennis season, I rarely get home before seven. On game days, you get home anywhere between 8:30 and 11:30 or later. Games can be on Mondays, Tuesdays, or Thursdays. Except varsity football and boys' basketball, which have games on Fridays). When your sport isn't in season, you might be in the weight room, editing the newspaper, attending open gym, or doing some other extracurricular.
• ALTERNATE: 4:00 p.m. - 9 p.m. (ish): this seems to be a popular work slot for most teens.
• Whenever you get home, you finish everything else that needs to get done. I play piano, and I try to get in an hour or two of practice a day, but that's not always possible. We have two-three hours of Calculus homework 2-3 times a week. Three reading assignments for reading per reading. Spanish vocab tests, economics packets, and a lot of online work for science classes--all in all, anywhere from fifteen minutes to six hours of homework per night. Keep in mind that the six hours of homework could fall on a night on which we don't get home until ten or eleven.
• So you see why it's frustrating when the protagonists in YA literature have no homework to worry about and don't seem to care about anything but their love interests? Jesus. Obviously I'd rather be thinking about Benedict Cumberbatch's cheekbones than conic parametric equations, but I also don't want to fail Calc. So drop some stuff, you suggest. Don't take on more than you can chew. You don't need to be in so many extracurriculars. BS. You do whatever you think it'll take to get into college. You snatch as many leadership positions as you can. You take every AP course even though you don't need most of them for the career you have in mind. And you claw your way along while trying to keep your class rank, in order to get scholarships.

VERDICT: BUSTED

• Teens procrastinate.
• Okay, so the psychologist Roy Baumeister once did this experiment during which he had two groups of students, right? He put one group of students in front of an oven full of baking cookies and gave them a bowl of radishes, saying the could eat as many radishes as they wanted but weren’t allowed to touch the cookies, and left them alone. The second group was allowed to eat as many cookies as they wanted. After thirty minutes, he gave both groups the same math problem. The group that got to eat cookies solved the problem way faster because the first group had already used up their store of mental energy. Willpower is a real thing, guys. After four years with a schedule like the one outlined above, you don’t have a ton of it. You replenish it with a good night of sleep and a good meal, right? But have to skip dinner at least a few times a week and get maybe five hours of sleep. My sleep deck is the goddamn Titanic. And it isn’t just me, it isn’t just because of writing—most of my friends are stressed. Like. I’m sitting here trying to remember if there’s one of us who hasn’t burst into tears at some point during this last year.
• Another thing: all of our teachers, coaches, advisors, etc. tell us to prioritize. So we do. But prioritizing means that something has to come first, right? And everything else has to come after that, and that makes people mad. So prioritize really means this: Put my subject first. My sport. My club. And we’re in a stage of our lives where we really need to be liked, and when a teacher/coach/advisor is unhappy, we take it a lot harder than I think most people realize.

VERDICT: PFFT. EVERYBODY PROCRASTINATES

• Teens are shallow.
• So, I have a love affair with Buzzfeed. But this article pissed me off. At lunch on Friday, my friends and I talked about the gender gap, internalized misogyny, The Handmaid's Tale, and the tendency to fulfill expectations whether we want to or not. After school, we went out for coffee and talked about statutory rape, abortion, tried to figure out our political opinions, and acted out scenes from Frozen.

VERDICT: YOU DECIDE

• And a personal peeve: High school dances are no longer a thing.
• A lot of schools have done away with them due to low attendance, but the low attendance is caused primarily by rules about physical contact. For example, a few of our local schools saw a sharp decline in dance attendance after forbidding grinding. People don't buy tickets because the high school dance becomes more of a middle school formal, wherein you stand in your stupid little gender-segregated circles and jump around in time to the music. Less attendance = fewer tickets sold = less money to hire a DJ and buy decorations = crappy music and crappy decorations = an even small attendance for the next dance. So if schools do away with dances, that's usually why, not because we're too busy snapchatting/Facebooking/Tweeting/etc. But on the other hand, schools that do allow grinding tend to have pretty high attendance numbers. So are high school dances dying out? Should they? Meh.
• Also: Jeez, CNN. Lighten up on the nostalgia. If you want, you can come to my school and relive your prom in our cafeteria, where on dance nights you walk in and smack into an almost-literal wall of heat slide around on the very literally sweat-soaked floors.

VERDICT: BUSTED

What do you guys think? Did I miss anything important? Leave below in the comments, and I'll do another post. Also, what do you guys think of having a Twitter chat about this? YA authors, do you have questions or want to do a fact-check on your contemp manuscripts?

Sh*t People Say to Writers

Last Sunday, my local newspaper wrote a story about me...and my writing...and stuff. Those of you who have followed my blog for a while know that I used to be very, very secretive about writing. I never talked about it. So this week was WEIRD and awkward and generally hard for me, but on the bright side, I FINALLY get to write this post! I've always wanted to. :)

So you wrote a book?

Actually, I've written five novel-length works. The first one will never, ever see the light of day. I queried the second one and found my agent with it (YAY!), but it never made it past acquisitions. I also wrote a (very bad) sequel to it that clocked in around 200K (LOLZ). I wrote a standalone Norse-inspired fantasy about wolves and hot chocolate and losing your first love, which I'm planning to revise. Then I wrote this one, which sold. And I'm currently working on a few projects--

Like, a novel? Fiction or nonfiction? Wait, what are you doing? Why are you poking me?

I'm trying to edit your redundancy, but your "delete" button seems to be broken.

How many pages is your fiction novel?

OH MY--*breathes* never mind. And I don't know. 51,000 words. Ish.

What is your book about?

(via Title To Come)

BONUS: What is your book about (old church ladies edition)

It's about fornication and drinking and drugs and abortion and basically what your grandson/granddaughter does on weekends, except I'm not going to tell you that because I'm afraid you'll have a literal heart attack.

Childhood, ma'am. It's about childhood and growing up. *insert smile and innocent head-tilt*

So how much did you have to, like, pay for them to publish this book?

Actually, in traditional publishing, the publishing house gives you money for the--

What?! How much did you make?

Good question. Would you like to know how much I weigh, too?

Dude, I wish I had the time to write a book.

What? What is this time thing that you speak of?

What's your book called?

Um, I can't tell you right now. I went through a title change, and the new title is still confidential. Hopefully I can share soon, though!

Whatever. You just don't want us to buy it, do you?

I actually really, really want you to buy it, because your money will trickle down to me. And I do like money an awful lot.

Okay, so can I read it now?

But you need someone to read it! What if it sucks?

Gee, that isn't the stuff of my nightmares or anything.

Am I in your book?

Oh, honey. Would I really tell you if you were?

Can I be in your next book?

Sure. I'll kill you brutally within the opening pages. I'll even let you choose your own method of death. Sound good? (but if I DO put you in a book and you don't like what you read, remember this conversation, kay? xoxoxo).

Well, can I be in the movie?

On the teensy chance that they make a movie...no.

Do you know J.K. Rowling?

Yup. We had lunch the other day.

Why did you write a book about suicide? You're not suicidal, are you?

No, but once I wrote a fantasy about a world at war and a girl who kills people, and I'm not homicidal.

Yet.

I'd like to write a novel. How does it work? Can you tell your publisher to buy my book?

Well. I can tell you that it DOESN'T work like that. First you have to write a novel and edit the unmerciful suck out of it. And after it's nice and pretty and polished, you have to slug through the query trenches and hope you find an agent who loves it enough to sub it for you, and then you have to hope that an editor loves it enough to invest money and time and tears and sweat and passion into it.

Okay...so--

NO, I CANNOT TELL MY PUBLISHER TO BUY YOUR NONEXISTENT BOOK.

So...YA magical realism? That's like Twilight, isn't it?

Why won't you answer any of our questions? You won't even tell us what the title is. Stop being so stuck up about it.

Eek! I don't mean to come off that way--but I've never really talked about my writing with people, and this makes me feel so incredibly uncomfortable that I've pretty much depleted what little social ability I have. But I really can't tell you the title!

Geez, you talk about this so often. You sound so stuck up.

But--YOU ASKED! I don't mean to sound stuck up! But this is something I'm genuinely and overwhelmingly happy about, and I'm sorry if I'm doing something to make you misinterpret this. But I AM proud of myself, I DO love writing, and sometimes it's hard not to smile like an idiot about it.

Want High Schoolers to Learn About Your Upcoming Book?

Hi, everyone!

So, you guys may or may not know that I'm the head editor of our school newspaper. Recently, I had this idea of interviewing the lovely Leigh Ann Kopans about her upcoming book, ONE (and yes, the hyperlink is a less-than-subtle hint to add it on Goodreads. DO IT! :) .....

 

And then I managed to get ARCs of ONE displayed in both our school library and in our local library...

 

 

 

 

It's only been up for about a week, but so far, the response has been really positive. The thing is, the kids in my school aren't big on reading (I know. It's seriously depressing), and I think having this opportunity is exciting for a lot my peers. I mean, it isn't every day that you get to read about an author's writing process, recieve advice about writing, and oogle at books that haven't even been released yet.

 

I really, really like doing this. First of all, it makes high schoolers excited to read, and second of all, it captures the attention of the target audience, as well as that of teachers and librarians. I'd really like to keep doing it.

 

Basically, I'm wondering if any other authors debuting in 2013 or spring 2014 would be interested in being interviewed and having an ARC or two displayed in our library. Just think, you'd be getting some publicity AND helping anti-reading kids fall in love with your books. I'm also starting a writing club at our school, so during the 2013-14 school year, I'd like to have a featured author every month that the club can Skype chat (or otherwise communicate) with about writing, revising, critiquing, etc.

 

A few other things:

 

1. The featured books must be YA.

2. We have one more issue coming out this May, and five next year (November, December, February, March, and May), so the books would have to release close-ish to those dates.

3. The authors would obviously have to send me cookies (I'm only mostly joking)
EDIT: 4. The book would preferably be a debut. If it isn't, it must be a standalone or the first of a series (I'm afraid doing second installments would be confusing for people who haven't read the first).

 

If you're interested, please shoot me an email at azhang68[at]gmail[dot]com!

EDIT: The May and February slots are filled. The October/November slot may be filled, but you might be able to convince me to double up :)

2012 Recap

Here’s a secret: I hate New Year’s Eve, for three reasons: 1) For the first six months, my dates are always wrong, 2) January always feels like an enormously long Monday, and 3) I always look back and feel all down because I hadn’t accomplished all of the things I’d wanted to accomplish that year. So…I wrote this to prove to myself that I didn’t spend the entire year lying on the couch watching Big Bang Theory.

January: Made a New Year’s resolution to sign with an agent this year. Began re-querying my YA fantasy, WILDFLOWER. Sent nine queries, received four full requests. Fell out of my chair during Global Studies upon receiving a request from an awesome agent just ten days later.

February: Officially signed with the wonderful Emily Keyes of the L. Perkins Agency on the 23^rd. Started revising WILDFLOWER for subs.

March: Made a twitter and this blog. Tried to balance revising, school, and extracurriculars with arguable success.

April: Finished revising WILDFLOWER…but it came in at almost 125K. Started working on another round of revisions with the sole purpose of cutting words.

May: Struck up a conversation regarding BEA, fake boobs, and man purses on Twitter, and irrevocably became writing friends with John, Ari, Olivia, and Mark. Started the For Love of YA blog with my wonderful critique partner/soulmate/brother-from-another-mother, Mark.

June: Took exams, finished up sophomore year, went to a few graduation parties, did some other generally stupid things to celebrate the start of summer vacation, like getting kicked out of Walmart for pushing my friend Noah down the isles at four in the morning, which, apparently, is frowned upon. Finished another round of revisions for WILDFLOWER and managed to cut 20,000 words. Started discussing subs, which was super exciting. Turned sixteen. Realized that I really, really needed to find the time to take Driver’s Ed, because all evidence suggested that I would be the last person in my grade to get my license. Ended up become very apathetic towards the subject as the month went on. Continued mooching rides off friends.

July: Got a marketing internship with Entangled Publishing, which I was truly terrible at. Wrote a novel about wolves and stars and hot chocolate. Officially sent WILDFLOWER out on subs. A few houses requested the manuscript. Then, on the 25^th, I got an email while wandering through Walmart titled “Don’t Freak Out,” saying that a senior editor at Harlequin wanted to take it to acquisitions. Naturally, I freaked out. Actually, I almost fell over. A Walmart employee caught me and asked me if I was okay in a very Oh-crap-this-child-is-insane kind of way. I hugged her. And then ran away.

August: Became an intern for Pam van Hylckama Vlieg of Larsen Pomada. Read some full requests, loved being on the other side of the querying process. Waited for the acquisitions meeting. Made the varsity team for tennis. Realized that real-life-summer-vacation wasn’t nearly as long as Phineas and Ferb’s summer vacation, frantically tried to finish AP homework.

September: Got kicked off the varsity team for tennis, which was…sad (meh. I still lettered, so I’m still putting it on college applications). Started junior year with a totally screwed up schedule, tried taking Pre-Calc as an independent study (which was a total fail), ended up having to take it as an online course. Assumed the editor-in-chief position for our school newspaper, published our first issue (which was so awfully awful it was just awful…but we figured out what to do by the second issue). Realized that taking AP Chemistry was probably one of the worst decisions that I had ever made. WILDFLOWER received its first rejection. I moped. Found out that the editor at Harlequin got called to jury duty, so the acquisitions meeting had been moved back yet again.

October: Found out that another senior editor at Harlequin had expressed interest in WILDFLOWER, and that both would take it to the board. Got an official date for the acquisitions meeting, which was later cancelled because of Hurricane Sandy. Signed up and outlined for NaNo. Got a phone call at six in the morning saying that a boy in my grade had died in a car accident, almost quit NaNo because the novel I’d planned to write was about a car crash, and I didn’t think I could handle it emotionally.

November: Received the news that the board at Harlequin ultimately decided to pass on WILDFLOWER. Could not find enough chocolate to smother the sobby feels. Decided to participate in NaNoWriMo because I was tired of moping. Didn’t sleep very much. Was bribed into going Black Friday shopping, which was…terrifying. Finished my YA contemp, FOR EVERY LIFE, on November 30^th.

December: Sent FOR EVERY LIFE off to my agent and critique partners, who all seemed to really like it. Started talking about subbing it. Had a mild life crisis regarding what to do with my life. Spent winter break studying for the SATs, revising FOR EVERY LIFE, and trying to watch all ten seasons of Friends. Wrote this blog post. Am currently realizing that I have not, in fact, wasted an entire year of my life doing nothing of importance.

In all seriousness, this was a great year. I wrote, I read, I made friends, and honestly, I'm so, so thankful for all of you. So...happy New Year’s Eve, everyone!

Summer Highlights

Guys. GUYS. You know what today is? It's the last Saturday before school starts on Tuesday. LAST. SATURDAY. Sad story, ain't it? So that's why I've been mysteriously absent for the last few weeks. I WAS blogging, just for AP English instead of here.

ERGH. Teachers don't let you sit in a closet all day and write. Can you imagine? Sooooo not looking forward to it...so, let's relive summer a bit, shall we? Here, in no particular order, are the highlights of my summer, to prove to the world that I accomplished a few things (I know, weird, right?).

• Hanging out with friends. Just in general. From shopping to bonfires at the beach to getting kicked out of Walmart at four in the morning (because I guess it's frowned upon to stick your friend in a shopping cart and push him down the isles...who knew?). Just being a teenager, I guess. Doing idiotic things. Laughing about them later. Getting grounded. Y'know.
• Tennis season. So, I made varsity this year. Then three of our seniors decided that they DID want to play this year, after all...and so I got pushed off. Sigh. But I seriously love this sport so much. Like, I've never been a super-athletic person. I'm definitely not cross-country or track material. But still, I get to letter this year which means that I'm in line for captain next year which means that my design for sweatpants might actually be realized (I want them to say KISS MY ACE across the back).
• Buying a new house. And it's big and beautiful and I have a Narnia in my room. Seriously.
• Writing. Drafted a new manuscript and revised an old one and outlined a few ideas. I sat in my closet and in my bathtub and on my roof and in my other odd writing nooks and got lost in words. And it was wonderful.
• Reading. I read and reread so many wonderful books this summer. I laughed and sobbed and remembered why I first fell in love with words (but I did a lot of reading outside, and outside=mosquitoes. Did I mention that I'm allergic to mosquito bites? Like, severely?)
• Eating deep fried cookie dough on a stick. I KNOW, RIGHT?
• Critiquing. I have such a talented critique group, guys. Seriously. I'm so lucky to have the privilege of reading for them. It's like getting AARCs in my inbox.
• Interning. I got internship for a literary agent this summer, and it's been wonderful. I get to read full requests and I'm just like DUDE I WONDER IF SOMEONE WAS DOING THIS WHEN I WAS QUERYING THIS IS SWEET GAHHHH.
• My mom is making crown roast for dinner. Legit.
• The agony and ecstasy of being on subs. That is all. GAHHHHHHHHHH.

Top Ten Mishaps--um, Events of My Sophomore Year

Sophomore year is OVER. And I can seriously say that I couldn't have asked for a better year. So, I thought I'd write a post about the top ten stupid/hilarious/unbelievable/gooey events the past school year (because, let's face it, as teenagers we measure our lives in school years, not in actual years).

10: In Global Studies, on Columbus Day:
Teacher: Okay, guys, let's talk about Columbus!
Classmate: Oooooh! Wasn't he the guy who rode through America shouting that the British were coming?!

9: Passed our state's WKCE test with high enough scores to exempt most of my exams. Pretty sweet. (Still had to dissect a fetal pig for Human Anatomy and Physiology, though. Teacher wanted us to have the experience. *shudder*).

8. Legend of Korra premiere! I know, I'm such a dork. But The Last Airbender was seriously my favorite show when I was younger (okay, fine, on occasion I still do watch it with my little bro and sis...), and there was no way I was going to miss the new series. It's not as great as the original...but still pretty epic, no?

7. The Hunger Games premiere. I had seriously started counting down to it in March of freshman year. And it was worth it. I had plans to sneak out of my second-story bedroom window and pay one of my guy friends to drive me to the theater, but I chickened out. Boo.

6. Performance of Bach's Concerto in F Minor in a Big Fancy Concert Hall. See, I'd originally learned this for a concerto competition, but I ended up losing to a 24-yr old with a trombone. So since I didn't get to feature with a symphony orchestra, my piano teacher signed me up to play in this Big Fancy Televised Concert. I even recycled my prom dress for it and everything.

5. Tennis season. I only joined the team last summer because I needed a sport for college applications. And I was horrible when I'd started out. Like, seriously. I'd never really played before. But by the end of the season, I was our number two JV, and officially Good At A Sport Besides Swimming. Chances of making varsity this year are fairly high :)

4. Started social networking. Which I hadn't really considered doing for my book before my agent mentioned it. See, I have this issue with fads. So I never made a Facebook, never wore Silly Bandz (because they were RIDICULOUS), etc. But since social networking is so integral to the industry now, I kind of, you know, had to start tweeting and blogging, and it's seriously been so. Much. Fun.

3. Found a critique partner who actually, you know, CRITIQUES. I'd given my manuscript to two of my friends before, and while I love them to death, they didn't actually give me any helpful advice. Also started a blog with the fabulous CP in question, which you should totally check out: forloveofya.blogspot.com. Go there! Please.

2. Growing as a writer. Manuscript was rewritten...eight times this year? I'm very glad to say that I can look back and see that my writing has improved. It's encouraging :)

1. And the absolute highlight of my year...Finding an agent!!! :D Words cannot describe how amazing THE OFFER and THE CALL were. So. Unbelievably. Cool. I actually got the offer while I was in school, too! I mean...um...I totally wasn't on my phone at school or anything...

So that's it! This year really has been amazing. But that got me thinking...graduation was today, and of course the cliche "best for years of your life!" was thrown around about a million times. This year WILL NOT be the best I'll ever have (um, God forbid that I should count videos of heart transplants and pig dissections among the best in my life). So...junior year, no pressure or anything, but I expect you to be absolutely freaking epic. :D