I HAVE TO READ!

My family didn’t believe me when I said I wanted books for Christmas. (Okay, honestly, I wanted an agent, but that wasn’t something anyone could buy me and my newest MS wasn’t ready pre-Christmas to submit to agents. The next best thing was books.) My family looked at me like I was crazy. I tried to explain. I tried to say, “I’m a writer. I want to be published. I HAVE TO READ!” but for some reason this didn’t make sense to them. It’s a lesson I learned in college.

I took a yearlong writing seminar my senior year, in which the goal for us five students was to write one long project. That, however, wasn’t our only assignment—our professor also told us to read, read, read. He said that in order to be a good writer, you had to read ALL THE TIME. It wasn’t optional. Even though I was writing a novel for his class, even though I was taking 17 credits (or more) each semester, he shoved books at me and the other four students. Some were ones he thought we should all read. Others, he picked for each of us based on what we were writing. It didn’t matter that I was already swamped without the addition of writing a novel. It didn’t matter that I was also neck-deep and sinking in Quantitative Chemical Analysis (why, oh why, did I think that would be easier than Inorganic Chemistry???). He expected us to read and he checked up on us.

In college, as I wrote through the wee hours of Friday nights and read through the parties of Saturday nights, I didn’t know that what I was writing was a YA novel. My professor probably didn’t know it, either. He was older—long grey hair tied back in a ponytail and thick rimmed glasses through which he studied me in our one-on-one writing meetings—and had probably never read a YA novel in his life. I don’t think that I had either.

As a kid, I was obsessed with Sweet Valley and The Baby-Sitters Club. In high school, I moved on to the classics, The Great Gatsby, 1984, Pride and Prejudice, Catch-22, and A Farewell to Arms among my favorite. College came with its own reading list: science textbooks, poems, short stories, tomes like Ulysees, and all the books my professor put in my senior hands. I had no frame of reference for what I was really writing. Of course, I was watching TV shows like Dawson’s Creek, Roswell, Smallville, Gossip Girl, etc. and LOVING THEM. Why did it take me so long to realize that my novel was like these TV shows? Why didn’t I discover YA books until after I graduated college? I don’t know.

Confession: The first YA book I ever read just may have been Stephenie Meyer’s TWILIGHT—I blame the super pretty cover that snagged my attention one day while I was walking through a bookstore. The second—Jenny Han’s THE SUMMER I TURNED PRETTY—was handed to me by my young cousin. I was hooked. Here, finally, was what I needed to be reading. Here, finally, were books that mirrored my writing. (Though of course I still find time to read other books, too.)

Since I discovered the YA world, my writing has vastly improved. I know, finally, know what I’m doing and why I’m doing it. I may never have gotten there if it hadn’t been for my professor who insisted that, above all else, I read. My family, though perplexed, listened to my Christmas wishes and the stack of books I received is about half my height. So, if you don’t mind, I’m going to go read.