Why I Can't Write YA Books

With all the reading I have been doing, I’ve been thinking more and more about the kind of books I want to write. One genre that I could eliminate quickly was Young Adult. With every YA book and YA TV show that I watch, I’m amazed at situations that are being written for these young people. The sex scenes alone are more sensational than what most adults twice their age would experience.

But, I’m getting ahead of myself. Below are my top 3 reasons for not writing YA books.

1. I don’t want to think about kids having sex. I know it happens. It happened to me during that time but its a little creepy to be an adult imagining how a 16 year old (or younger) would deal with sex. I’ve often heard people say they wish the Twilight series had more sex. Many thought it strange that Edward was so sold fashioned and wanted to wait. I think that absence opened the door for the Grey’s storyline-like going from one extreme to another. Why don’t we think it’s strange for a middle aged man or woman to describe in detail the boy of a child performing sexual acts?
2. I don’t want to think about the horrors that can happen to a child. Again, I know it happens but I don’t want to be the one to describe it in detail. I recently read a book that described the rape of one teenager by another. I’m grateful the author spared us too many details but the visual of a 17 year old in a bathroom washing the blood from her body after her attack is still in my head.
3. I can’t relate to what kids today want to read. When I was a child, I was a child. Now that I am an adult, I am an adult and I think adult things. I enjoyed my childhood and I have no desire to relive it. I don’t regret any of it. I don’t want to want to go back and be more popular. I don’t want to go back and date better jocks. I don’t want to go back and be rich even though the money would have been nice. My brand of YA would probably be very boring.

When I finally do get my writing mojo together, you can be assured my main characters will be 30+. Even writing a 21 year old seems beyond me. But we’ll see.

What do you think? Could you write a sex scene for a teenager? I do admire those of you than can step outside of yourselves and weave a good YA tale.

May Books-The Beginning

My reading really kicked up in May. So much so that I’ve had to split this post into two.

I really wanted to catch up lost ground because once I get back to work I won’t be able to read so much. But also because everyone wants to discourage me from reading. Why is that? You tell people you have a goal to read a certain number of books and their first inclination is to tell you that you won’t make it. That infuriates me to no end. There is a lot in life we can achieve when we stop spending so much time in front of the television. I doubt I would have read so many books thus far if I had not given up cable for Lent. I will keep reading and I will make my goal for the year. I would appreciate more support and less negative nonsense.

I’m now up to 34 books read for the year. This total includes some titles that will get their own posts.

All books links provided (in the sidebar) are from Amazon where I am an affiliate, but please support the book seller of your choice.

This is my last food related book I’m going to read for quite some time, if not ever. I’ve watched too many documentaries lately on top of the books I’ve read and all it has done is result in me not wanting to eat properly. And Jonathan spends a little too much talking about “shit”. I think he loves the word and just wants to say it as many times as possible. Our chickens live in shit, our pigs are covered in shit, the shit that gets in our food makes us sick…on and on and on. It’s all true but he could have been a little more eloquent. I am in the process of changing how I eat. I will not go completely meat free but I do think we should eat less meat overall. My personal changes will continue to evolve as I continue to learn and grow. I do recommend this book but just be ready for the language. I listened to this in audio.

This short book of poetry is all about a man’s love for his wife. It’s lovely and heart warming to read a man’s thoughts when he is truly, truly in love. I highly recommend when you need a little bit of love inspiration.

I’m always interested in books about working women and how they have found success. This was of particular interest to me because the author is British and the women she interviewed are of a more diverse background than you would typically get in a similar book written by an American author. I have this as an audio book and it was a quick listen, but I now know more about the recent history of what everyone else knows as football than I really wanted to know. I did get extremely bored hearing the football talk but I appreciate hearing the story of women in any field, but the book improved greatly with hearing the stories of the other women.

This is a very good book. I listened to the unabridged audio. This was my first Sue Grafton title. Now I feel like I need to start at the beginning, all the way to A. Do I dare?

This is a good book, but it has no clear point of view. The author speaks in 1st person plural but never 1st person singular. Everything is US and WE but never I, so it’s as if she’s trying to speak for all 3 sisters at the same time. This gets a little confusing when she’s speaking about one sisters secret in words that makes it seem that WE all know the secret but then she’ll remind the reader that the sister has yet to tell US.

I don’t know if this stands out when reading the book in print but it sticks out a lot when listening to it as I did. (love my Audible membership)

This family intrigues me and drives me crazy. They live in books and speak in Shakespeare quotes. Their actions in life always relate to something they rad and they are desperate to separate from their literary namesakes. This is just as exhausting to me as the people that relate everything in life to a movie. Every example they want to give comes from an exciting, memorable scene. 90% of the time I miss the point.

BUT, these people intrigue me and so I enjoy hearing their stories. This book is a good summer read.

I love, love, love this book. It’s not exactly a novel, but there is a lot to learn from this book. So much so that you will see (if not already) a

separate post

outlining all the goodness this book has brought into my life.

I was more interested in this title before I actually started listening to it. While it present some interesting information, I really don’t see a point in it and I can honestly say I learned nothing. I don’t see anything in this as new at all as the cover claims. Interesting, but not new.

I think it quite interesting and entirely creepy to hear how our lives and behaviors and purchases have become bits of data for the analyzers that sit around all day generalizing us into little buckets. While this can lead to great developments and increased safety, it is very clear that our lives are nowhere close to private. He even has a section discussing how the data analyzers are trolling our blogs to get information about us that we are choosing to give away so freely. Who knows what they think they are learning from me using my monthly book readings. The only thing that irks me about this book is the branding of data miners as “numerati”. This is nothing more than a way of putting a hollywood spin on something that has been around for a long time. In general, I can’t stand that. Sensational naming turns a group into a social club. But that is neither here nor there. I do recommend this book. Just be prepared to come out on the other end a little paranoid. I skipped the section discussing the fistulas in the sides of cattle. As I said before, I can’t hear anything else about our food supply right now.

Remaking of the T-Shirt

After cutting into some t-shirts to make

my version

of the barn throw from

Maya’s Reinvention book

, I was left with quite a few left overs and no idea of what to do with them. I decided to try my hand at making a scarf. You could consider this a variation on Maya’s story scarf. I used an acrylic cutting template to cut out the squares, ensuring I had roughly the same size throughout and went about piecing them together.

This was by no means quick as each scarf is about 7 feet long, but the end product made the labor worth it. I use snippets of pictures from the t-shirts as accents which adds a nice amount of wimpy to the scarves. I had enough pieces to make two scarves.

I was worried about how to finish the scarf, but after finding long strips of muslin in my stash that were the perfect size, I decided to use that as the backing. I treated it like a pillow case and top stitched the edges for a nice and neat finish.

They are heavy enough to be perfect early fall/spring scarves and the color combination will blend them with a number of outfits but I think they will stand out best with jeans and a nice crisp white shirt.

I haven’t decided what to do with these yet. I have more scarves in my collection than I need at the moment so these may become starter pieces in re-opening my long forgotten Etsy shop. I’ll have to think about it some more. Needless to say, future t-shirts to my closet will meet the same fate.