Why I love YA

After reading a recent post on the blog Love YA I really got started thinking about why I love to write and read Young Adult novels.  As should be obvious, I am no longer a young adult even by the most amazingly generous stretching of that definition.  But inside (and only in the best way) I am perpetually fourteen.  My husband is at peace with my love of Zac Efron and Harry Potter and Glee and the oeuvre of Step Up films.  But my heart is really in the literature.  I love the purity of emotion that only teenagers can experience, even if they are vampires or ghosts or live in a post-apocalyptic world. That emotion comes through the best in the written word. I probably read four times as much YA and Middle Grade as fiction written for adults.  With writing, you have the ability to be so much more free with your characters- often they don't think through their decisions or pause before they speak, they act rashly and blurt out whatever is on their minds.  It's more fun and more real.  Kids are funnier and more dramatic than we are.  It's the best.