Blame the morning

Snow days are lovely, right? Yeah. Well, they are, except when the phone ringing to tell you that it's a snow day wakes you up at five and you can't get back to sleep. After all, sleeping in is the highlight of no school.
Oh well. It's pretty.

Of course, it's still too dark to look like that, but maybe we'll get there.
Anyway, that wasn't what I was going to talk about.
Okay. So, for Christmas, I requested a book about writing. I like them. Sometimes, they can actually be really helpful. Gail Carson Levine's is pretty amazing.

It's short, but worth the read.
However, the one I requested is a little different.
It isn't bad. Some of it's helpful, even. But there's one bit that bugs me.
It's a book about writing YA, so a LOT of it is about getting inside the teenager's head. How it's dark and dangerous and a confusing time. It's like walking down a scary, dark road...
Yes, well, it can be. Sure. But if people go into writing thinking we're all angst filled emos who hate the world, the books that would emerge would NOT be pleasant ones. I've read books like that. We probably all have. You get about half way through them, put them down (or throw/drop/beat them against the wall) and think What?!
It isn't a good What?! either. It's a 'I'm seriously disgusted that you have this opinion of the average American Teenager. This is not how we are.'
It goes to what I was saying the other day. If you can't experience it, please have the decency to try and get it right. Maggie put it really well: use the experiences you have and go from there. If you've been a teenager, even a depressed teenager, you can use that. If you have been a bright, bubbly teenager, you can use that. But even depressed kids have bright spots and even bright teenagers go through depressed phases.
Plus, it isn't that hard to research teenagers. I can think of at least eight blogs that I personally know of all written by kids. If you want to get to know something, you research it. Relationships can be hard, yes, but I still think research can get you halfway there.
As far as I know, most kids are a little scared of something. I am personally prone to having bursts of 'I'm only going to apply to Ivy League Universities and then I'll get accepted nowhere, OH MY GOD I AM GOING TO FAIL AT LIFE' moments. (And I'll get accepted and then have no money when I graduate OH MY GOD moments usually follow.) But that isn't a dark and scary road. Sure, it's a road. But it's more this kind than anything else.

Sure, there's tree. Sure, you can't see too far ahead. I'm sure an occasional suicidal squirrel will run in front of your car and make you swerve and there will probably be a few uber obnoxious drivers who try to take both lanes. But it's there and it's mostly just a pretty way to get where you're going.
(Which, by the way, is not a dark, scary castle. Even though that could be kind of cool too.)

Yeah. I would live there.
Anyway, not the point. Blame the morning for my rambles, maybe, but I think this kind of sums up the other day's post. It's an example of not being able to live something but still pulling through. So many adults have written amazing books. Actually, adults pretty much write all the books. (For now. [; )But there are a few that think kids take the dark road and then completely insult all of us in the process.
Plus, in those books, they don't even end up at the dark castle. They end up at this one.

Note the fairies and flying unicorns. Not even a Pegasus; no, a flying unicorn. It's cool, and it's pretty, and it's every eight year old's dream, but it's also unrealistic.
Most of us aren't going to end up at either. Books that say we will look over the different parts of teenagers and even just the different parts of humans in general.
...
*cricket*
...
Okay. I think I have officially rambled myself out. I'm going to go try and fall asleep. Oh, or I could study. Or do my debate homework. Or research Ivy League colleges and how much they cost.
Or I can go live in a pretty castle. Like this one.

I'm done with the castles now. Promise. Maybe.
...
Okay, fine, probably not.