Comics for Young Adults

                I love comic books and basically everything superhero, but I’m not one of those people who judges DC and Marvel fans if they’ve only seen the movies. What I’ve learned from various Tumblr superhero confession blogs (and yes that can get as uncomfortable as it sounds) is that a lot of people want to read the comics of their beloved characters, but they find that comics are just too hard to get into. A lot of these superheroes debuted as far back as the 1930s and have a thousand intertwining plot lines. New readers are often left wondering what the heck the Superhero Registration Act was and wasn’t that Norman Osborn guy the Green Goblin?

                So I’ve compiled a list of easy to get into, almost no background knowledge needed, comic series especially for those who love Young Adult literature.

1.       The Runaways (2003)

This was my first ever comic book series. I read the first volume in about three days back in middle school. To this day, I still love these books. A group of LA teenagers finds out that their parents are all super villains wrapped up in a ritual sacrifice with the potential to bring on the apocalypse and decide to go on the run. They must stop their parents before it’s too late. The series, while having all the action and plot twists one expects from Marvel, deals with teen issues like rebellion, relationships, and trying to maintain childhood innocence in spite of all the world’s crap.

2.       Young Avengers (2005)

In its unfairly short run, the Young Avengers introduced teenage versions of many classic Avengers. This series contains wit, drama, and kick ass female characters. Also, Billy and Teddy are the cutest and healthiest couple in comics. The Young Avengers have recently had a reboot featuring kid!Loki and have played major roles in many Marvel-wide plot lines, so it’s definitely worth reading.

3.       Hawkeye (2012)

Unlike the previous two series, a teenager is not the main focus of these comics. But it does feature Kate Bishop from the Young Avengers and she is fabulous. Plus, if you loved Hawkeye in the Avengers movie, this series has all the sass and emotions you’ve been longing for.

P.S. My number one rule about starting to read comics is to just go with it. Read the descriptions at the beginning of every issue and understand that there are some references you’ll have to pick up on as you go. Also, Marvel and DC’s wikis help a lot with learning about back stories.

On A Related Note: Television

                "We all have bad choices to make. Some of us just have different bad choices."

                So remember when I was talking about how We Were Here offers characterization that other forms of media just can’t? Well, I am here today to gladly eat my own words. I present to you Orange is the New Black.

                Orange is the New Black is a Netflix original show that follows the story of Piper Chapman, a New York City business woman who is sentenced to a year in prison for a drug smuggling job she did ten years ago. Lest you think that this is another Confessions of a Shopaholic-style princess-must-give-up-her-tiara-to-learn-a-lesson comedy with a moral, this show offers back stories and drama worthy of the Emmys.

                The inmates in Orange is the New Black, aside from being examples of stunning acting, can teach any writer how to construct complex and realistic characters. It shows how back stories can explain misdeeds without justifying them. The show has about as many characters and plot lines as Game of Thrones but still manages to make them all different and interesting. I highly recommend it for all aspiring fiction writers.

                All episodes are now available on Netflix. Be warned: the show is Not Safe For Work enough to make a Tumblr user cringe.

Man, Does That Guy Have Issues: Writing Workout

                This exercise comes from a conversation I had with a friend in my creative writing club. She felt like her poetry lacked depth and meaning. I encouraged her to be vulnerable, pick something she felt strongly about. A teenage girl has got to have at least one insecurity, right?

But she was hesitant. She didn’t think she could share her writing if it was so personal. So I told her to write from the point of view of another person.

                So here’s the assignment: write from the point of view of a very sad or very angry person. It can be a historic figure, a character from a book, or someone you just made up. Write a poem, a monologue, or a short story.

                But the challenge is to avoid typical vulnerability clichés. Here are some words you are not allowed to use unless you want to sound like some middle-schooler writing angst-fueled poetry in the back of her math notebook (Seventh grade was a really rough time, you guys):

                Sad

                Broken

                Hurt

                Alone

                Vulnerable

Here’s a poem I wrote for a poetry slam a little while ago, from the point of view of a fifties housewife:

I remember the day you left

We stood on the train platform with all the other couples

I was wearing that dress of mine you liked

My promise to wait for you

And you leaned in and kissed me on the head

And told me you weren't going to change

And then you said goodbye

Three years later, I met you again on that platform

I was wearing the same dress

You smiled and said that your uniform was different but you weren't

But you wouldn't talk to me about the war

I asked you about Japan and you said

"Well, you've seen the posters."

Your hands shook in mine as we said I do

You got dressed in the dark so I couldn't see the scars

But everybody told me this was normal

Just get a little house out in the suburbs

Have a couple kids

He'll get a job in the city

You'll stay home and cook dinner

Don't talk about the war you could never understand

I knew I would never understand

So I told myself that it was fine

I pretended I didn't hear you calling at night

Searching for the brothers you'd lost

Men that I would never meet

I was able to ignore it till the time our little girl cried

And you said, "Shut her up, I can't listen to anymore children scream."

It wasn't my place

I didn't say

When I realized that in a world where content was sold in a sear's catalog

Next to joy and a new blender

It was still something we would never be

The other wives in neighborhood never talked about it

Their men had been through the same thing

Came home to the same strangers

Why did we never talk about it?

Did we think that if we turned the tv up enough

Flip the pages of Good Housekeeping loud enough

We could drown out the sound of bullets coming from our husbands' ears

The noise makes my head hurt

I can't think straight

No, I don't want anymore pills

I want you

Except I want the version that give dandelions

Picked on the side of the road

Because you just remembered that they were my favorite flower

The version before you got on that train

Before some general sat you down

Gave you the power of God

To destroy a thousand lives instantly

And two lives years later

Hello, Senator McCarthy

Yes I would like to report a traitor

That man sitting in my house is not my husband

He is not of this country

He is still in Japan

Still sitting in the pilots' seat

Finger on the trigger

Ready to drop

And we are Hiroshima lovers

Shadows blown up on the walls of a suburban home by a bomb that detonated 20 years ago

The shape of us standing on that train platform

I am wearing your favorite dress

And you lean in and kiss me goodbye

Writer's Cheat Sheet

Found this gem on Tumblr this morning:

Summer Reading, Had Me a Blast: We Were Here and Why We Read

                

               We Were Here by Matt de la Peña is the journal of Miguel, a teenager who is sent to a group home after an unspeakable crime. While he is there, he meets a host of suspicious characters, from his dumb and sporadically violent roommate, Rondell, to the psychopathic Mong. Miguel is determined to bide his time and keep to himself until his sentence is up. That changes the night Mong shows up in his room and convinces Rondell and him to escape the group home and go to Mexico. Together, they travel south while trying to come to terms with their pasts and find how three group home kids belong in the world.

                Matt de la Peña has encountered critical acclaim, as well as prejudice, for his handling of racial issues with his young characters. With a half-Mexican/half-White narrator travelling with black boy and an Asian boy, the topic of race is bond to come up. But We Were Here is more focused on the meaning of good kids and bad kids. Peña fleshes out the characters that society normally overlooks, showing that people can do bad things but still be good.

                Peña’s books have been banded for supposedly representing a specific group that leaves readers different from the characters feeling isolated. But We Were Here reminds us why we read, and why we write. Miguel’s story might be completely different from many people’s, but the feelings of regret and irrelevance he experiences are relatable to anyone. We read to learn about lives different than our own, while also learning something about ourselves, showing that we are not so different from each other.

Next on my summer reading list: Let Me In by John Ajvide Lindquist

Query Quirks

                The road to publishing can go to “Yay, this is the best book ever! Who wouldn’t want to publish me?” to “Oh my god, I wrote the worst thing ever and everybody knows it,” in three seconds. I have a completed manuscript for a Young Adult that I’ve been looking for an agent for. I’ll admit that I had barely sent out my query letter when I started looking online for clothes for my book tour. Six rejection letters later, I am feeling less optimistic.

                Rejection is normal in the publishing process. The first Harry Potter book was rejected by nine publishers. Gone with the Wind was rejected 38 times. I attended a book signing by Jay Asher a couple years ago. He said that his bestseller Thirteen Reasons Why was accepted by the thirteenth publisher (get it?) He also said that rejection letters all start to sound like bad break-up excuse after a while. There’s the “It’s not you; it’s me” (I am just not the right agent to represent your book,) the “There’s someone else” (Our agency is already representing a book on the same subject,) and the more or less straight forward “I don’t think you’re ready for a relationship yet” (Your book needs more work before it can be published.)  So far, I’ve only gotten the “It’s not you; it’s me” response but ask anyone who has ever heard this excuse. It’s hard not to think that it’s you.

                Meanwhile, as I sit and wait for responses from the other agents I queried, and there’s a good chance they won’t even respond, my creativity is being squashed. Normally, I would be using this summer to write the first draft of my next novel. But every time I try to write the first chapter of one of the millions of ideas I had while writing my last book, I lose my motivation after the first couple of pages. This is the part of writing that is usually my favorite, diving right in, typing away with reckless abandon. But now I’m stuck, unable to move onto the next project while I’m worried about my current manuscript getting picked up.

                So now I’m trying to push past that.Writing Forums is helping me revise my query and I’ve found a batch of new agents on AgentQuery.com (they also have examples of successful queries.) Hopefully I’ll have more luck this time around and be able to move forward with my writing. Until then, tea, yoga, and complaining on the internet is helping a lot.

My Cat Died and I Wrote a Novel: Writing Workout

                This is a writing exercise I learned while at a Young Writer’s Workshop taught by Jane St. Anthony, author of The Summer Sherman Loved Me, back when I was in middle school. This exercise is for beginners but if your writing is lacking believable emotion, give it a try.

Step 1:

                Think of a childhood memory where one vivid emotion is present. It could be the Christmas you got an amazing bike and could never have imagined being happier. It could be the day your dog died and you experienced grief for the first time. Write down a literal description of the event, how it happened, how you felt, how you reacted.

Step 2:

                Pick one of these stock photos I included below (I apologize in advance for any corniness; I was trying to avoid copy infringement.) Write a story based on one of those photos featuring the emotion from your memory. Project your feelings onto a character in the story; make the emotion as close to your memory as possible.