YA novelists get real

MANILA, Philippines - Amid today’s TLDR (Too Long, Didn’t Read) culture of Buzzfeed articles and 140-character limits, we can at least count on Young Adult novels to offer young minds literary sustenance. More so, actual use of one’s imagination. In Margaret Stohl’s book-turned-movie Beautiful Creatures, outsider teens communicate telepathically, while Alyson Noel’s YA fantasy series, The Soul Seekers, shuttles between the lands of the living and the dead. On the other hand, Fil-Am Melissa de la Cruz has a knack for navigating worlds both super-rich and supernatural in her Hamptons-set Au Pairs books and vampire series Blue Bloods. The three best-selling authors dropped by Manila recently to pop a bottle of champagne, talk twerking, and discuss the YA novel as a better outlet for teen escape than, say, Amanda Bynes’s Twitter feed. 

YOUNG STAR: How did you guys get your start as YA novelists?

MARGARET STOHL: My family had a video game company so I had written all kinds of things for that. Then I came home one day and told my daughter, “Your teacher, Mrs. Garcia, and I are going to write a book.” She said, “You won’t do that. You never finish anything.” I told her, “It’s on!” So I wasn’t trying to write a book, I was trying to win a bet. 

MELISSA DE LA CRUZ: I was a beauty editor at Allure but I always wanted to write novels. When I wrote my first novel, YA was just kind of starting — I think The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants came out. Gossip Girl had come out then and Simon & Schuster actually said, “I think your voice might be suited to YA. Would you consider it?” I loved Gossip Girl so I said, “Oh yeah!” It was the easiest thing I’d ever written. I like writing for adults but I really love writing for teenagers.

M.S.: Just to clarify, when you said it was the easiest thing to write, it’s not that it’s easy for any of us to write Young Adult.

M.D.: It comes naturally to us. 

‘Cause you’re not teens, but you manage to get the tone.

ALYSON NOEL: I never felt grown up. I mean, I ended up with a husband, credit cards and a mortgage, and I’m not sure how it happened. My teen years were absolutely horrible but there was always an immediacy to those feelings. I have an empathy for that time. I think teens get marginalized and their emotions get marginalized. “Oh, you’ll get through that” or “Oh, you’ll grow up and you’ll see.” But while you’re in it, you’re in it. It’s the first time for everything and you’ll never feel that deeply again. It’s so rich to write about.

Do you struggle with what’s appropriate and not appropriate subject matter when writing for teens?

M.D.: I think a lot of adults are scared of teenagers. I just remember being that age and dressing so inappropriately, wearing the corset with the booty shorts. I totally get it. You’re young and beautiful; show it off!

M.S.: Although if I could give one message to teens everywhere, it’s that the underbutt, you don’t need to show it.

And sideboob: Is that okay?

M.S.: I’m more okay with sideboob than underbutt.

A.N.: She’s the prude in the group! (Kids) are supposed to shock us. When you’re a teen, it’s getting harder and harder for you to find ways to do it. Honestly, when your parents have more tats than you…

I mean, there’s Miley Cyrus.

M.D.: And I have to say, I enjoyed her performance on the VMAs. She just wanted to shock people.

A.N.: That’s what the VMAs are about. Like when Madonna was in that wedding dress for Like A Virgin. 

M.S.: I didn’t have a problem with it but I didn’t understand the tongue thing.

M.D.: I was fine with the twerking. I don’t like how society is always angry about young women flaunting their beauty and sexuality.

Have you gotten flak for your novels?

M.S.: I’ve had reactions from kids who’ve said, “That’s not realistic!” Like how in Beautiful Creatures, a boy would be talking about sex more. But then I’ve had another little kid who said to her mom, “I liked it but there was way too much sex in the book!” The mom said, “There’s no sex in the book. Wait, what did you think sex is?” “Kissing!”

A.N.: I’ve had a woman come up to me at a reading. She goes, “I just want you to know that I am 78 years old and if Ever and Damon don’t do it soon, I’m going to die of sexual frustration!” She is one of my favorite readers of all time.

M.S.: In Icons, my latest book, the big sort-of sex scenes involve two hands.

A.N.: Toucans?

(Everyone laughs)

M.S.: Hands! Yes, a really hot aviary.

M.D.: It’s the sexiest handholding I’ve ever read.

M.S.: There are four teens whose sensitive connection was to literally bind their hands together. My sex scenes are never like anyone else’s ‘cause nobody’s are.

M.D.: That’s why I wrote about vampires, because bloodsucking could stand in for the sex. Vampires were not a big thing then. I wrote my vampire book before Twilight. Isn’t that crazy? I wrote it because Anne Rice was over, Buffy was over, and there were no vampires in pop culture.

Aspiration is also a big theme in your writing, I’ve noticed.

M.D.: ‘Cause I’m Filipino (Laughs). I don’t know, as a teen, I was a loner and goal-oriented. It was hard. I was an immigrant and I went to a small, private, very elite girl’s school in San Francisco. And now that I look back at it, it wasn’t so much that the girls were mean, it was just that I was so different. My parents were very strict. I actually had cool friends that wanted to do stuff but I could never do them because my parents were scared of an American teen experience. So I think the rest of my life has been trying to capture that teen experience I didn’t have as a teenager. Making up for it, you know?

Rejection is also a big teen theme, of course. Any of you experience rejection with your books?

A.N.: I worked on my first book for 15 years. I had no idea what i was doing and I sent it out to everyone and everyone rejected it. They all said the same thing: great voice, no plot. So I stuck with the story, I just had to keep revising it. Ultimately, it got published.

M.D.: My first book that I went out with that was rejected was called Stuck-Up Trendy Asian Bitch. It was a little early for that. And then I wrote a second novel that was also rejected. I don’t even remember the title of that one. A lot of it was like  — I love Lena Dunham’s Girls, ‘cause that’s what I was trying to do right after college. That was my book. And she got it so right and she did it.

Imagine if Lena were Filipino, right?

M.D.: See that’s the thing I was struggling with. How do you write about your identity and then have it be universal too? Because I think Girls gets away with it is because she’s a white girl. She didn’t have to do that. And then I think when you write about your identity, you get a little bit political, which people get a little bit worried about.

M.S.: I have given my agent terrible pieces of stories before. She’s like, “Do not continue.”  My worst idea was a Reverse Annie story about a rich girl who just gets bored. My kids never let me live that down. But you’ve got to own that. If you’re so afraid to look like an idiot, you’ll never do anything. We embrace our inner idiot.

A great message to leave our young minds with.

M.S.: Yes, embrace your inner idiot!