The approving thing came into play today, in the car. “So, Mom,
I was thinking about going as an assassin for Halloween. But, I doubt we’ll be
able to find any appropriate costumes to wear.” I laughed.
My mom’s face turned into a frown, and she looked almost as
horrified as a pacifist reading The Hunger
Games. “What? That’s like going as a murderer! It’s revolting!”
I didn’t say anything. Yesterday, she had finished the
eighty page excerpt of my book, Hope and
Fear. This is the logline I’ve come up with for it (like, the thing you see
on the guide on TV with one sentence summaries of movies): “When a life changing
secret is revealed, a fifteen year old assassin runs from her enchanted
homeland and into a war torn land.”
I believe my mom was thinking the exact same thing, so we
had an awkward silence.
I recalled exactly what my mom said to me about my book. “It’s
very, very interesting and well written. I think that if you worked hard
enough, you could land a literary agent.”
She said my work was good, but she never said she liked it. That’s a difference.
Knowing my mother, I believe she chose her words carefully. She didn’t approve
of the themes in my book, although it was well written and interesting.
I’m in a rock and a hard place. My number one supporter doesn’t
‘like’ my work. And not because it sucks. I’ve gotten great reviews from every
person who has read it. So, it’s at least NOT horrible.
Now, I’m wondering what she will think of the rest of Hope and Fear. Especially towards the
end, where it describes a physical torture scene. Not graphic, but detailed.
Several of my mom’s church friends read The Hunger Games. One of them, Jackie, is a pacifist who cringes if
she sees an ant being squashed, and she has likeminded friends. They were
discussing how they hated HG and how horrible it was when my mom said, “Well, I
thought it was pretty good.”
My mom was talking about it from a literary standpoint. She
doesn’t believe (obviously) in kids being forced to kill kids. But, Jackie and
the women were letting the horror of the Games get in the way of enjoying the
well written book. (And, for the record, I believe Suzanne Collins doesn’t
support the idea of sticking twenty four teens in an area to fight to the death
on live TV.)
Speak by Laurie
Halse-Anderson is also another example. The book follows Melinda, a high school
girl who was raped at a party. Several people have tried to ban it, because it,
well, deals with rape. I’ve read Speak,
and it was beautiful and heart stopping, but not graphic in anyway.
Halse-Anderson is an amazing writer, but certain people despise her writing because
she wrote about a sensitive issue.
You can’t please everyone, or the Middle East problems would
already be solved and we would have had Osama bin Laden drinking tea with the
president. It’s like ‘you can’t have your cake and eat it, too.’ Personally, I
think I just want to eat the cake, even if it’s not my slice. So, do that.
It’s your story. You don’t have to believe in the concept of
the Hunger Games to write it. You don’t have to believe in violence against
women to write a novel like Speak.
You don’t have to believe in murder and war to write a book about innocent
civilians being slaughtered. You just have to make it raise questions. That’s
what a great book does: it makes you think.
Everyone is free to have their opinions. Don’t let it get in
the way of enjoying and learning from a great book, though. Thankfully, my mom
knows that.
In the meantime, if Hope and Fear ever becomes big and a
movie’s made (probably not, but it is fun to dream on), I doubt I will ever be
able to go as my own character Kira for Halloween.
Keep writing!
~Reine~
OMG! Thank you so much for writing this. When I first wrote my book, I wrote down EVERYTHING! but when people read, I went back and took out all the parts that they thought were weird and made them cringe. I think this is great advice
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