I attended the Writer’s’ Digest Novel Writers Conference in Pasadena, CA during the last weekend of October despite the fact that this meant I would miss two World Series games. (I live with a lifelong Dodger fanatic–it mattered.)
The Writers Digest Novel Conference
I had a good conference on the whole, mostly attending sessions where agents allowed writers a window into the what and whys of their job. I also had the chance to see how very productive writers like Bob Mayer work, and to take a refresher on the writing software Scrivener with April Davila, just in time to use it for NaNoWriMo.
While the workshop sessions are the heart of a conference (learning tricks of the trade is the main reason people will part with several hundred hard-earned dollars), one of my favorite reasons for attending any conference is to be inspired by the keynote speakers. Listening to them, I don’t take notes; I don’t think about how I plan to use what I’ve learned. I just empty myself and listen. My expectation is to be energized in a broad sense. A good keynote speaker reminds me that the path I’m walking is directed toward meaning. A very good keynote speaker will remind me that the meaning can come from unexpected diversions from that path as well as the path itself.
Both Lisa See and Heather Graham reminded me of the diversions, the way family and career life each lead to experience and storytelling. In honor of the Halloween weekend, Graham did so in a killer Maleficent costume.
Neal Shusterman
But I was anticipating Neal Shusterman’s presentation as I am more familiar with his work. As a high school teacher librarian, I purchased not only most of Shusterman’s novels, but multiple copies of those I liked to book talk. My favorite–and I bought thirty copies of it–was Unwind, a future dystopia in which the US has fought a second Civil War over abortion. The anti-abortionists win, but with the stipulation that if a child doesn’t work out for some reason, parents can agree to have him or her ‘unwound’ during the teen years; that is, the teen can be used for various body-part transplants. If every part of the teen’s body is given life in a new form, he is not technically dead. This engenders some heavy thoughts about what consciousness is and how it gives life meaning. (I’ve reviewed the novel more fully here.) Still, it’s easy to book talk. As a writer, I also realize that it’s easy to pitch.
Challenger Deep
In 2015, Shusterman published Challenger Deep, a book very different from his previous work. In an afterword, he discusses the relationship of the novel to his real-world family life. His teen son, Brendan, was diagnosed as having schizophrenia, and the novel includes many sketches that he drew while he was, as Shusterman says, “in the depths.”
Challenger Deep is a complex book, a moving and metaphorical (partly hallucinatory) story of mental health treatment and the tricks of the mind. It won the National Book Award for Young People’s Literature, rightly so. It’s difficult to describe in a few sentences. (I wrote a full review here.) So I was hoping that Shusterman would take questions after his presentation. I wanted to thank him for his work, which has helped me to do my job to cultivate reading among teens. But I also wanted to know how he would pitch Challenger Deep, considering it’s dive into the brain of a mentally ill boy.
Helping Teens Who Lose Their Way
Shusterman gave a presentation that covered the arc of his career. He started with tales of his youthful writing, his time in the elementary school library, and his storytelling career as a camp counselor. He was by turns comic and thoughtful. He ran out of time for questions, so I didn’t get to ask about pitching a complex book, but he did part with a serious story. Years ago, he received a letter from a girl whose best friend had died shortly after the two were ATVing and the friend was thrown from her ATV. The letter writer told Shusterman how his Everlost (Skinjacker) series helped her through her grief. Everlost images a world beyond death inhabited by children who lose their way to the afterlife. Some of the things most precious to them in life return to them there.
The grieving teen’s letter was both poignant and articulate.
Opportunity to Say Thanks
Although I had purchased numerous copies of Challenger Deep for my library, I bought another because Shusterman was signing books. I wanted this one for my teen niece. When I got to the front of the line, I asked to take a selfie, joking that it would make my colleagues jealous. Shusterman very graciously agreed. But I also thanked him for his work. I told him as quick a story as I could–there were still some folks behind me in line–about how when I would book talk Unwind to remedial reading classes, teens who had never before read anything willingly literally leapt across the table to grab copies before anyone else could get them.
I wanted to tell him that it was unlikely that these teens would (or could) articulate their feeling in the sort of letter that the grieving girl had written, so he wouldn’t hear from them anytime soon. But that his work was helping them not just to leap across the table, but to leap up and grab those lower rungs of the literacy ladder. When saying this, I felt myself tearing up. Oh my God, I thought, he’ll think I’m a nutbucket. I quickly finished my story, took the selfie, thanked him again, and left.
I worry that by talking too much about YA literature, I’m going to pigeonhole myself. While I am working on a YA novel, I’ve recently completed an adult novel. All of the short stories and essays I’ve had published or that are slated to be published soon have been for adults. But I want to give YA fiction its due.
YA Fiction Matters
Days after the conference, I was attending my writing group and discussing my experience. One of the writers commented that earlier that week, a woman had asked him, “What’s the point of YA fiction?” and implied that it was lousy stuff that no self-respecting reader would want to pick up. Another of my group members answered, “She’s not the audience.” And that, I thought, was true.
As my experience shows, YA authors not only have an audience of literate, thoughtful young readers; they create readers whose lives will be forever changed by the experience of their books. For that, we adults owe them our thanks.