A Letter to Stephanie Meyer

Dear Ms. Meyer--

If you had ever met me, you would never have guessed that I was the kind of person that would read a book like Twilight.  To be honest, in many ways I'm not.  When kids kiss in the hall, I get in their faces and yell "gross!" I forbid them to talk about prom in class.  I'm not very romantic myself.  I once got a poem from a boy and gave it back with suggestions for improvement.  And prior to Twilight, I hadn't read a Young Adult book since I was a young adult.   So how did I end up reading it?  It certainly wasn't the popularity.  When my sister-in-law tried to get me to read Fifty Shades of Gray, our conversation went like this:

Her:  Hey.  I just read FSoG, you should read it!

Me:  Absolutely Not.

Her:  Whatever.  Just read it.  You read fast.  It'll take you like a day.

Me:  Yeah, but what if I died right after I finished it and that was the last thing I did?  I'd rather die by setting myself on fire or ingesting poison-coated wolf spiders or...

Her:  I get it.  Fine. Sorry for trying to connect with you, you heartless jerk. 

So how did I end up reading your book, in the face of much derision from my fellow English teachers?  It started honorably enough.  I was doing a book club with some students.  A couple of them read Jerzy Kosinski's incredibly depressing book The Painted Bird on my recommendation.  I had warned them, but they went for it. Then, they got really, really mad at me.  I agreed to read something equally upsetting and they picked Twilight for me.  

Now this was a big deal for me because the last time I agreed to something like this, a student made me read a book called Flyy Girl by Omar Tyree. It wasn't terrible, but it was filled with so much sex I blush to think about it seven years later (and I'm HBO levels of desensitized).  I am, however, a woman of my word, so I ponied up and read Twilight, and hate to admit that I didn't hate it.  I wanted to, desperately, but I just couldn't do it. Despite what many people say, it isn't terribly written and was a good story.  Most of all, it was a lovely break from the Russian literature kick I was on.  I ended up reading all four because I have a severe case of OCSD,Obsessive-Compulsive Series Disorder.  Once I start, I can't stop.  (For instance, while I love Game of Thrones the show, the books drove me crazy.  George R.R. Martin cannot edit himself and overuses the word jape more than I leave my shoes at the bottom of the stairs and almost kill my husband. I still read the series last summer.  All 85,000 pages of them).   Anyways, I read the whole series, and liked them less with every book.  Regardless, they did get me excited about YA lit.  Even my sister-in-law supports my new habit (thanks for The Hunger Games, Aubie!).

Long story short, I kind of owe this writing project to your work (and those vindictive students), and I recently needed it again. I've finished the exposition of my book and stopped to streamline it.  I don't want to get into the habit of editing all the time, but I also don't want to have to correct habitual mistakes.  I noticed that I wasn't doing a great job at physically describing characters and my dialogue needed some work, so I decided to look back at Twilight for inspiration, and it worked.  I can't lie.  Some of the inspiration was what I don't want to do (i.e. make my character clumsy and totally dependent on her dude to save her), but plenty of it was helpful (such as how to introduce a character that the reader can picture or craft believable teenage dialogue).  

So I'm sorry.  I kind of hipstered out on you at the beginning and still want to deny that I've ever read your books and punch myself in the face for having used my precious time on earth reading that instead of Don Quixote or something. But thank you for writing your book anyways and for helping me remember that reading can be fun and for teaching me that vampires could be chaste and sparkly.  

Sincerely,

Allison KT

Who Makes a Good Female Role Model?

I'd like to think of myself as a strong woman and as a fan of "real" females in literature.  Part of the reason I wanted to write a YA book with a female protagonist is because I am often bothered by the cliche of the girl who needs saving.  While I enjoyed the Twilight series, I (like many, many others) was bothered by the fact that Bella only feels like she is strong, smart, beautiful, etc. once she becomes a vampire.  I much prefer September from Catherynne Valente's beautifully written The Girl Who Circumnavigated Fairyland in a Boat of Her Own Making.  If you haven't read it and its sequel (The Girl Who Fell Below Fairyland and Led the Revels There), stop reading this and go read that. Just look at those glorious titles.  It's clear who's in charge in these books.

As I'm writing, however, I am finding it hard to develop a character that represents my ideals.  My protagonist is an outsider, struggling to maintain her sense of self when faced with some major challenges. I want to help her, to save her by introducing characters who will help her understand her self-worth.  But it's a fine line between having others help you and not helping yourself.

Not to mention which, while watching the women's Wimbledon final today, I found myself initially cheering against Marion Bartoli, the eventual champion.  She's relatively out of shape.  She always looks unhappy. She has a weird relationship with her father (her former coach). She's fist-pumping after every point, including to total strangers who aren't even cheering for her.

Until I realize that's exactly why I should be cheering for her.  Bartoli, brunette, diminutive, tough (today at least) is facing down yet another tall, pretty blonde, who can't stop crying. The crowd isn't behind her.  She's having to do all the work for herself and doesn't seem to care what she looks like doing it.  When she wins the tournament for the first time in her long career, she responds with a winning mix of humility, bravado, grace, and awkwardness.  Watching her inelegant climb in and out of the friends and family box, I see myself in her.

Bartoli v Lisicki

I don't end up liking her exactly (I'm still a big fan of the unapologetically strong Serena Williams), but I appreciate what she's made me consider: that flaws make for an interesting character but that it's also going to be a delicate balancing act in keeping my protagonist complex yet likable, strong yet relateable.  I am going to keep Bartoli in mind as write, both for her strengths and weaknesses, as a model and a reality check.

Why Am I Here?

No.  I'm not having an existential crisis (at this moment).  In fact, I feel like I have renewed purpose.  What, you ask?  Writing.  I haven't written a non-work related text since my creative writing seminars in college, and I hated those.  They were mostly filled with self-important, melodramatic jerks, myself included.  Don't believe me?  You obviously don't know me; as evidence, I provide Exhibit A, an unaltered poem I wrote in English 4800, in December of 1999:

"Every Four Years"

When everyone grew tired
of complaining about the wetbacks and jews
who were ruining their lives,
my family would make fun of Benji.

Uncle Dave was especially adept
at imitating the garbled whir of Benji's voice,
meanwhile beating his chest with curled up fingers.

The whole room would laugh,
even Aunt Eloise who had a mustache
that would put Hitler to shame.

I sat in the corner
and watched as Benji laughed
with the rest of the room.

If only I had known
that he would be dead before the next family reunion,
I might have laughed, too.

Wow.  I mean, I think there is something there, but Hitler mustache?  That's a little heavy-handed. Not to mention that clearly, although this poem was fictional, I liked to see myself as the person in the corner too good to laugh, even though I love politically incorrect shows like Workaholics, It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia, and Curb Your Enthusiasm.  And don't forget the overly dramatic ending.  The sad thing?  This was my best work of the year.  In Advanced Creative Writing.  It's no wonder that, disgusted with myself, I wrote the following in my "Writer's Manifesto":  "I have realized this semester, [sic] that I have made a mistake...I am not a writer."  Of course!  Look at the comma before the 'that.' Thus, I gave up.

Yet here I am again.  So back to the original question.  Why am I here?  Simply put, it's because I need something new in my life.  I'm pretty happy teaching AP Language to the (generally) smart, hard-working students who will inevitably go on to become more successful than I.  I can't lie and say I love everything about the job, and any student I've ever taught will tell you that I am constantly threatening to quit.  Yet I haven't, and I don't want to.  I think I'm a much better teacher than I ever was a writer, and I need to support my book buying habit, my subscriptions to Amazon Prime, Netflix, and Spotify, and the occasional vacation.  I've recently started doing SAT and ACT tutoring (let me know if you're interested!) but that isn't exactly good for the soul.

The idea came to me from a friend.  I was jogging on the Greenway one day with my good friend Michelle Y.A.--discussing Twilight or some other insanely popular book-- and we were talking some serious junk.  Something along the lines of, "we could definitely do that."  (See! I'm still a self-important jerk). We were talking about the genre, you know paranormal teen romance, and brainstormed what territory remained undiscovered.  We came up with ghosts.  There are plenty of ghost stories, but we couldn't think of anything since the 1990 classic film Ghost (RIP Patrick Swayze) that went there.  We talked about co-writing it, but she had a baby, life happened, and we dropped the idea.

Until I picked it back up a couple of weeks ago.  At the beginning of every summer, as Michelle Y.A. perfectly put it, "I become unmoored."  In contrast to the hectic school year, I'm suddenly faced with more time than I know what to do with. (Yes!  I did just end a sentence with a preposition! I'm writing in English, not Latin, and it's functionally grammatical!).  I spent the beginning of June catching up on Game of Thrones, watching another season of Dr. Who, and then four straight days of True Blood.  I'm not even sure I like that show.  At my brother's suggestion, I was about to start in on Breaking Bad when I realized that if I died the next day I would feel like I might have wasted those last couple weeks.  (I had a similar sentiment about the 50 Shades of Gray trilogy.  When my sister-and-law tried to get me to read them, all I could think was "What if this is the last thing I ever read?"  I couldn't have that).

I decided to get down to business.  I went to my friend Amy's lake house to dog-sit the illustrious Hank! while she was out-of-town and did some research on ghosts (you know, by reading the Wikipedia page), pick the brains of resident lake psychologist, Marquis, and his lovely wife Suzanne, and started writing.  I ran my ideas by another friend Chau, an awesomely critical doctor (most people won't tell it like it is, but she will!), and after lying awake at night trying to resolve the central story, I had it.

I started in earnest writing a couple days ago and got going.  I realized that I didn't really know how to proceed, so I hopped onto Amazon and got a book titled The Essential Guide to Getting Your Book Published and realized I probably wasn't going to be able to just ship it off and become a millionaire, so here I am taking a break from writing, to write about writing (don't you just love all things meta?).  This blog is meant to help me reflect on writing, to get ideas from the people I know, and to make me follow through on writing this book.  I've said it out loud.  Now it's time to back it up.