On nearly every panel I’ve ever participated in, there’s a question that bubbles to the surface about why or how I write young adult. Some people assume that, as a teacher, it’s natural to write about YA because I’m plugged into the young adult world. It’s true that I do pull snippets of my teaching life, but it’s usually logistical stuff like scheduling or how a school day would run. Mostly, my experience from writing young adult is pulled from my own teenage experience and my own experience now as an adult human being. It comes from observation and eavesdropping and reading young adult stories and watching young adult films and a basic empathy and understanding for that horrifying time that we call adolescence. But above all, I believe that I write young adult literature because I have a deep and profound respect for young adults and their varied and incredible lives.

Many people want to write young adult because it seems easier than writing literary fiction or science fiction or some form of adult fiction. Young adults are easy to understand, right? They all have the same problems (relationships, school, relationships, school, school, school). They do the same things (study, party, ditch, party, make out, drugs). They want the same things (acceptance). They go through the same emotional wheelhouse (fear, sadness, anger). I mean, the books write themselves, right?

Wrong.

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