What I'm Writing {3}: The Best Friend Origin Story

Hey loves!

So, this week I'm gonna talk a little more about my currently-untitled-YA-book-in-progress that I am not so creatively calling "Airport Book." [BOOK TITLE SUGGESTIONS ARE WELCOME]

I introduced the premise of this book a little bit last week. And this week I've been focusing on a chapter from Willa's perspective. So let me introduce her PROPERLY to y'all.

Willa Thompson is 17 and she lives in NYC. My goal is for her to be smart and serious about her future and responsible, but sort of eccentric and goofy at the same time. We'll see if I ever succeed on that front. And Willa's best friend is named Ana Cabral. In this particular area of the book, Ana is traveling with Willa to visit her dad.

So, I wrote this whole Willa-Ana friendship origin story and now that I've written the damn thing, I don't think it REALLY matters. I mean, what's more important is that they're friends, right? I don't want to bore my hopefully-somewhere-in-the-future readers with this whole expositional story if in the end is has absolutely no bearing on the rest of the story.

Buuuuut . . . I kind of really like their little origin story. It's not all that shocking or weird or different, but I think it does a good job of explaining the dynamic between the two girls. So! After the jump, feel free to check out the very very rough edit of the BFF Origin Story.

TGIF: YA Saves

So, this has been a fairly fraught week in the YA world. On  Saturday, the Wall Street Journal published an article by Meghan Cox Gurdon who decided to assess the state of YA literature and determined that it's too dark and too violent and gives troubled teens ideas of how to off themselves or otherwise wreak havoc on their lives.

*groan*

So naturally, Ginger over at GReads! has asked:


How do you feel about the "dark" books filling our YA shelves today?


They don't bother me one bit.

I hate censorship. I hate when people want to discount or water down the teenage experience. And I hate when people point fingers and talk shit about things that they haven't properly researched.

Luckily, the WSJ is a respectable newspaper, and have published a seriously moving piece written by YA author Sherman Alexie, who wrote The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-time Indian. Go read it. It's awesome.

AND NOW I'm going to go prepare for my sister to come to NYC this weekend. I hope y'all have all had freaking fantastic week and that your weekend is going to be as much fun as mine!