David Patneaude's Blog: Different Worlds

Lots of keystrokes and ink spent lately on the recent influx of writers of adult books into the kidlit world.

My attitude is, more power to 'em. If they can do a good job of reaching young readers (or even if they can't), they have every right to make the attempt. What bothers me is when some of the columnists/panelists/bloggers/experts who note this trend imply that the influx is going to upgrade the field of writing for kids, that all of those well-meaning (but not quite accomplished) writers currently doing business in the kidlit realm need to be propped up by writers who really know how to tell a story (and they've proven it by selling lots of books to big people).

Here's my belief, columnists/panelists/bloggers/experts: The "help" isn't needed. The books are welcome, but before we anoint any saviors, let's see how their books actually stack up against the books being written by authors who've been active in kids' literature for a while and have no intention of leaving it. Let's see how well their books compare to books by writers like Elizabeth Wein, Nancy Farmer, Walter Dean Myers, Franny Billingsley, Karen Cushman, Andrew Smith, Neil Schusterman, Laurie Halse Anderson, Rebecca Stead, Christopher Paul Curtis, Martha Brockenbrough, Kirby Larson, Louis Sachar, E.L. Konigsburg, Brian Selznick, Ryan Graudin, Kate DiCamillo, Grace Lin, Gary Schmidt...

...Ruta Sepetys. A marvelously talented writer. And this review is supposed to be about one of her books, SALT TO THE SEA. So let's get on with it.

The waning days of World War Two. A familiar setting but not. Not battlefields. Not roundups. Not death camps. This story is told from the viewpoints of four young people in the dying days of the Nazi regime. Three of them are fleeing the invading Russian army and their pasts and seeking something better. One is a tool of the Nazi government, blindly and foolishly going along.

The author does a masterful job of portraying their distinctive personalities and letting their stories unfold and intertwine. This is an historical novel, of course, but its humanity is timeless. And there's something--loss, cruelty, sadness, cowardice, bravery, kindness, treachery, tragedy, heroics, love, death--for everyone. A story well told. Read it.

From time to time I run into someone who finds out I’m a writer and tells me they’ve got an idea for a book but just don’t have the time to sit down and write it. You should do it, I say, but I avoid giving them advice or anything else beyond mild encouragement. In general I don’t like getting unsolicited advice, so I don’t feel comfortable giving it.

But in my head the lecture percolates mutely. And if anyone I talked to were actually interested enough in the writing thing to ask me how I manage to get it done, I’d be happy to turn off the mute switch.

If you’re hard-pressed for time (and all of us think we are), I’d say, look at how you spend it. Besides the stuff you really and actually and absolutely have to do (working, eating, sleeping, exercising, making sure your kids stay healthy), where else does your time go? How many hours a day do you devote to the TV, the laptop, the tablet, the phone, to something someone else has written? But I gotta relax! you say. And what I would say is that’s an excuse, not a reason. Write your book, then relax.

And when you think about writing that book, don’t think of it as a big-ass, hundred-thousand-word novel that you have to attack at one sitting like a twenty-two inch pizza. Think of it as a marathon. When you run a marathon (and I’ve run a few, slowly), you don’t do all twenty-six miles, three hundred eighty-five yards in the first five minutes. If you’re fast, in the first five minutes you do a mile. If you’re slow, you do a half-mile. But regardless of your speed, if you put one foot in front of the other, and then do it again, and you keep doing it for forty or fifty thousand more strides (one at a time, sure, but the steps all add up), after two or three or four–or more–hours, you’ll cross that finish line. Remember the tortoise!

And speaking of tortoises, when I got the idea for my first novel, I was afraid at first that I wouldn’t have time to write it. I’d written some short stories and gotten them published, but a novel? I have a job! I have a wife! I have two little kids and a big one in college and a house and car to take care of. I have TV to watch and movies to see and places to go and books and magazines and newspapers to read.

But I had a book I wanted to write. And even my short stories had taught me a lesson: a little at a time does the trick. So I looked at my schedule and realized I was spending an hour on the bus each day going to and from my job in downtown Seattle. I got a pad of paper and a pen (no laptops back then) and sat down in the back of the bus and began writing. My goal: a page a day. And I met it. At the end of a year, I had my novel. Then I went to work revising it. Much of that was done on the home computer–late at night, early in the morning–but a lot of it was also on the bus.

I began the submission process. Another marathon. But after lots of rejections, I got an acceptance. The book–SOMEONE WAS WATCHING–was published in 1993. Twenty-two years later it’s still in print. Nine more books followed, and I’m working on a bunch of others.

So if you want a write a book, do it. No excuses. It could change your life. And the lives of your readers.

I don't read books--even great books--more than once. There are too many good (and great) ones out there, and as the T-shirt says, too little time. But I'll make an exception for Chime. I'm certain I'll be reading it again. Maybe not cover to cover, but whenever I get hungry for something special, I'll sample a taste--rich, sweet, bitter, unexpected, nourishing, enlightening, inspiring, appetizing--from somewhere in this feast of imagination, preparation, and writing prowess.

I heard Franny Billingsley speak at a conference in the spring. She considers herself a slow writer, and I suppose if you judge her on her output, she is. She took probably a dozen years between her last novel and this one. But the time she takes isn't spent twiddling her thumbs. The time she takes in this case resulted in a near-perfect book where every word, phrase, passage, scene is engaging and magical and evocative and poetic, the pieces all fit, there's no fat that should've been cut out but wasn't, the characters are authentic, and the ending is satisfying and sticks to your ribs like Mom's slow-cooked stew.

Don't like fantasy? Read it anyway. It's about much more than fantasy.

I'm fielding questions about writing (a couple a week or so to start with) on Goodreads, so feel free to ask. It'll give me an opportunity to make stuff up.

I'm fielding questions about writing (a couple a week or so to start with) on Goodreads, so feel free to ask. It'll give me an opportunity to make stuff up.

One curse of being a writer is the temptation to read other writers' stuff and analyze the hell out of it. Instead of simply enjoying a story, doing that old suspension-of-disbelief thing, you tend to look at its bones--the style, techniques, methods, theme. You isolate the pieces--context, characters, conflict, choices, changes. You look at the balancing act of show versus tell, the word choice, the figurative language, the point of view, the tense, the authenticity of dialogue. You note the amount of research that must've been involved.

But in a way all of that can be a blessing, too. Because when you read something really good, and it transports you into that suspension-of-disbelief zone despite your critical leanings, you KNOW it's good. And when you do peek below for a glimpse at the underpinnings of the story, you appreciate what the author has done, the work that's gone into it.

DIRT BIKES, DRONES, AND OTHER WAYS TO FLY is one of those books. Conrad Wesselhoeft doesn't live in rural New Mexico. He isn't seventeen. He isn't trying to figure out seventeen-year-old girls. He doesn't converse regularly with seventeen-year-old friends or members of a national security team. He doesn't fly drones over Pakistan. He isn't a world champion gamer. He doesn't spend hours riding a dirt bike through the desert or jumping it from suicidal heights or diving from airplanes. He's not a kid dealing with the death of a parent and a sister's terminal illness and a shattered family.

But he makes you believe all these things. Which is the mark of a writer who's done the work and the homework. The research. The writing. The revising. He's done the teamwork thing--listening to critique, listening to your agent, listening to your editor.

I appreciated everything Conrad accomplished in DIRT BIKES. But more importantly, I ENJOYED it.

At an annoyingly young age (compared to me, anyway) Gavin Extence has written a nearly perfect book. What is it about British writers, anyway? Is there some kind of gene that makes them wise and talented beyond their years? A gene that for me--even though I'm twice his age and have that one-fourth Irish thing going--still hasn't quite kicked in?

But enough about me. Enough whining. Let's talk about THE UNIVERSE VERSUS ALEX WOODS, which is, I guess, if it has to be genre-ized, a coming of age story that's about a kid who gets hit in the head with a chunk of meteorite, his mom, astrology, tarot cards, his friend (a girl), an American curmudgeon who befriends him, epilepsy, the nervous system, the universe, Kurt Vonnegut, his books, a book club, disease, death, dignity, religion, bullying, libraries and librarians, overcoming adversity, persistence, adults who are jerks, adults who are gems, revelation, good laws, bad laws, progress, regress, learning to drive, loyalty, heartbreaking sadness, unbridled joy, single-mindedness, empathy, cleverness, courage, being true to yourself, and doing the right thing, no matter what the consequences.

I don't think the story would have had an easy time finding a home here in the good old US of A if it hadn't already had a lot of success across the pond. The main character's a guy. There's no romance to speak of, thus no beautiful couple (mysterious, sensuous beauty; muscled, dangerous dude) on the cover. No fantasy. No "chosen one" theme (unless you count being conked on the head by a meteorite). And there's no editing (self or institutional) to "cleanse" the story from its viewpoints on various sacred cows that could have publishers and some members of the book-reading (or book-burning) public flogging themselves in dismay.

Mr. Extence and his characters aren't afraid to discuss the futility rather than the glory of war, the hypocrisy of religion or at least those who practice it, the shortcomings of not only George W Bush, who was (and is) a favorite whipping boy, but also Ronald Reagan, a minor saint in the eyes of some Americans who went through much of his presidency in a fog. Also mentioned, and not in unfavorable terms: single parenthood, homosexuality, agnosticism, atheism, suicide, assisted suicide. Did I mention generalized swearing and the use of the word fuck and its variations and a one-time appearance of "the worst word in the world?" But American publishers and audiences seem to be okay with swearing (and violence, and war, and infantile, starry-eyed romance, and mediocre writing, even. It's those other things, sacred or in their eyes the opposite--profane--that give them the chilly-willies.

My overwhelming feeling is that in the end, the author was true to his story. He included what he felt had to be included to tell the tale well and completely, and his editors not only let him keep it in, but embraced it. Over there, that was simply being, like Alex himself, true to your beliefs. Here it would be brave, and unlikely.

You should get to know Alex. You won't forget him.

Unless I'm on vacation or taking some other major break from the day-to-day, I read almost exclusively on the Stairmaster at the Y. Reading does a lot of things for me, but one of the benefits of reading while exercising is the diversion, the anesthetic effect of having something else to think about besides the heart-pumping, breath-stealing, sweat-producing annoyance of climbing 165 flights of stairs in 35 minutes or so. Anyway, that's where I read now and where I've read in the recent and not so recent past--until I picked up GONE GIRL and discovered that 35 minutes and waiting until the next day to get back at the book just wasn't doing it, that is. Gillian Flynn definitely knows how to get a reader hooked, and she does it the right way, with fine writing, complex characters, and a strong plot. I found that I simply couldn't NOT read it, and I was prepared to love it.

But in the end I found it fell a little short for me--not as a writer, necessarily, because she definitely knows how to write--characters, scenes, dialogue, conflict, suspense, narrative format--and not really as a reader, although there were a few places where the suspension of disbelief was stretched thin and close to the breaking point, and I could see through the sheerness of it to the devices holding the whole thing up. What it came down to was my viewpoint as a human--after getting to know the characters and having a lot invested in them and having hopes and expectations for how things should turn out--and having that viewpoint soured.

In a way, that's a testament to the author's skills. If we didn't think of the characters as fellow human beings, if we didn't care about them, we wouldn't care what happened to them, good or bad. We wouldn't be thinking about it days or weeks later. But still...

This isn't another CORRECTIONS, or HOUSE OF SAND AND FOG, where it's hard to care about any of the characters and in the end all you're left with is admiration for the writing and an empty feeling about the story itself and questions about the point of it all. But it's not far removed from those books. The characters in GONE GIRL are flawed, but for a while we're allowed to pull for them, and then we're not. Maybe that's consistent with the overall narrative, but I don't have to like it. Not everything provocative is booth engaging and enjoyable. Just ask anyone who's had to endure Miley Cyrus or that guy with the foot-long fingernails or two dogs humping. Distaste and disappointment aren't feelings you can turn off or on; they just are.

As of today, more than six thousand readers have reviewed Eleanor & Park on Goodreads, so maybe we don't need another opinion, especially because it's not in the least dissenting. But what the heck, it'll keep me out of trouble for a while. And I need the practice.

When my novel Framed in Fire was published in 1999 (before some of you whippersnappers were even BORN), one of the people who reviewed it commented (unfavorably) on the fact that one of the characters was a bullying stepfather and another was a doormat wife. According to the reviewer, these were cliches that should have been avoided at all costs. The criticism stung a bit (obviously--I still remember it fourteen years later). I didn't see it that way, though. Abusive stepparents (and parents, and spouses, and people in general) are a fact of life. Because versions of them have appeared in stories in the past means they can never appear again? I don't think so. If that were the case, by now we'd pretty much have no stories to tell.

I read somewhere once that there are only thirty stories, and it's up to the writer to make them feel unique. Somewhere else I heard that there's really only one story: protagonist faces conflict; protagonist makes choices; protagonist gets in deeper trouble; protagonist gets out of trouble, one way or another.

My point is, I'm not going to criticize Rainbow Rowell for her evil/abusive/bullying/creepy stepfather, nor for her pushover/doormat mother/wife. Also not for the KID WHO KNOWS KARATE AND GETS TO USE IT WHEN IT MATTERS or the MISFIT KIDS WHO FIND EACH OTHER or the mean girls or the alternating points of view or the authentic teen language. These characters and storytelling devices have been used before, but SO WHAT? The author gives her characters lively engaging personalities. They're likeable. They have significant conflict in their lives and they're left to deal with most of it on their own. As readers, we pull for them. And there's a mystery component that we get to consider as we're tugged along, wondering how things are going to turn out. Because even though we've seen some (maybe all) of this stuff before, we haven't seen these particular characters before and we haven't seen this story unfold through their eyes. So to me it felt as fresh as a story can feel after thousands of years of storytelling and hundreds of years of novels.

If you're up for a solid, well-written, realistic YA tale, read Eleanor & Park. You won't be deja vu'd, bored, or disappointed.

There at least a couple different kinds of mysteries. There's the obvious one--the body on the floor and everybody including the reader wondering for the entire length of the story whodunit. Then there's the kind where there's a mystery but nobody including the protagonist and the reader knows there's a mystery until the solution appears. There's stuff going on, some of which may be puzzling or even mysterious, but there's also other stuff going on that seems to be more significant, so everybody gets distracted with what apparently is the main question/conflict/story.

Louis Sachar did this brilliantly a few decades ago with HOLES. Rebecca Stead did it just as brilliantly a few years ago with WHEN YOU REACH ME. And in LIAR AND SPY, she takes that route, albeit less dramatically, once more. So if you've read WHEN YOU REACH ME, or even her earlier FIRST LIGHT, and you start reading LIAR AND SPY, you begin looking for pieces of a puzzle early on, even before, under ordinary circumstances, you'd suspect there was one. Which doesn't detract much from the story, really. In fact, even when you're sure something is going on under the surface stuff, you don't know exactly what it is, and you don't know how many "its" there are.

The author's writing is economical and engaging. The characters are likeable or not, but consistently believable. The adults aren't fools, and they don't get in the way of the young protagonist and his buddies working things out for themselves. The book has gotten a lot of praise, and I can certainly see why. I would definitely recommend it, especially to someone who hasn't read Rebecca Stead's earlier books. It would be fun to jump into this story unencumbered by experience and without being nagged by that little feeling of deja vu.