What's the rush?

2) Quit worrying about being published RIGHT NOW.Jeez, guys, what's the rush? The number of people who get published in their teens is vanishingly small. And as Justine Larbalestier points out in her wise article Too Young To Publish, when they do get published, it is not always a good thing. Being published before you're thirty is considered young to be published; when you're published as a teen, it's newsworthy because you are so young, but you're also treated like a dog who paints. It doesn't really matter if the paintings are good, it's just exciting that the dog can do it in the first place. That's not always such a great feeling. Anyway, telling yourself that you need to be PUBLISHED RIGHT NOW is putting an awful lot of unnecessary pressure on yourself. Being published is not the ultimate measure of the worth of what you do. What you should be concentrating on now is working on your writing, polishing it, and making it better. Show it to people (not your parents) who can critique it for you — an online writing workshop like critters.org can be helpful. Or take writing classes — if your school doesn't offer them, a local university probably does. I took writing classes at UCLA when I was in high school, frinstance. Objective, professional adult readers can tell you how ready you are for publication.

I was scouring through other blogs today when I came across this gem of a point in one of Cassandra Clare's, the author of the Mental Instruments series, blog posts. You can read the whole article for yourself here.

Anyway, it made me think of today's blog post. Why do I, and many other teen writers, feel the need to rush into publication? Sometimes it feels like I have to publish now or else. Never mind that I still have the rest of my life to live, or that the opportunities are actually greater as an adult. I still get this intense feeling that I am in a rush against time. I HAVE to finish my novel before I'm out of highschool....or else. It's fairly ridiculous.

I've thought really hard about this urgency. On the one hand, I like that the urgency makes me feel like I'm being timed - An intense sense of duty, as well as the feeling that I only have a year to get everything done, keeps me going. But there's also what Cassandra pointed out above: Chances are, the teen won't be viewed for their talents - they'll be viewed just because they're a teen. I feel that defeats the purpose of writing. The writing itself, in my opinion, trumps all.

When teen writers come to mind, I tend to think of Paolini, who recieves almost as much negative feedback, if not more, than he does positive feedback. At one point, there was a number of sites dedicated solely to bashing his works. Maybe it was because of his popularity (things very popular are prone to have a backlash audience as well); maybe there was many flaws in his writings, as it was still developing what with him being - what? - fifteen?; maybe his parents did assist. For the most part, though, I think the fact that he published as a teen played a large part in it - a large part in his positive and negative feedback. And I'll be damned if my age decides how serious my work will be taken. I want my work to decide that.

I'm not going to lie. I know that getting published as a teenager would be a GREAT marketing tool, and I have thought - many times - that I had to get published before that marketing tool went away. But the knowledge that such a tool could be as good as it is bad makes me second think that.

Let me sum my thoughts up: I don't think that teen writers should stop writing because they have all of their life - this feuls ultimate procrastination - nor do I believe that they should feel the strong urgency to get published now. I still think they should practice, try, and write as though their time will run out when they become adults, but keep a cool head even if they're not a published author by then. Writing takes practice. We need all the practice we can get.

How do you think teen writers should approach publication?

P.S. I'm writing a novel. As thus, by publication, I'm referring to a novel sized work. I'll probably talk about what I'm writing this friday. Stay tuned - I will have a guest interview this wednesday!