How Dear Teen Me Was Born

Miranda: When I was a kid, I was a rabid Star Trek fan. I loved talking about Data and Wesley Crusher and Klingons to anyone who would listen. Which was just about nobody. Everyone at my elementary school seemed to hate it, and they teased me for liking such a dorky show.

Emily: And I was totally into Hanson. Like, it got to the point where I started keeping a journal about my favorite music, which was mostly Hanson in 1998, just so I could talk about them to somebody. Which turned out to be paper. I think it was sort of the blog of my day, because my BFF would also come over and write in it and we drew pictures and pasted in articles and photos from magazines and such.

Miranda: I was very interested in science. On a standardized science test in 6^th grade, I scored in the 100^th percentile in the United States. My dad got me a subscription to Discover magazine, and sometimes he’d be willing to watch Star Trek with me or talk about it, but other than that, I was pretty much alone. My 8^th grade science teacher had this awesome telescope, but I was the only person who ever showed up at the school at night to use it.

Emily: All I cared about was music. I picked a song of the month or “SOM” and wrote it down in the journal on a list that I started every new school year. I watched music shows and journalled during the commercials. I begged and pleaded with my parents to let me go to my first concert, which was Everclear (it was the Sno Core tour and, whoa, this unknown band called The Black-Eyed Peas opened) – they relented when I told them my friend Ben would go with me. He was a boy, and therefore I wouldn’t die. So lame. How was I ever going to be a rock star or a music producer if I couldn’t listen to all the music? If I couldn’t go to shows without boys? If bands didn’t even come to Maine?

Miranda: How was Star Trek: The Next Generation even on the air, I thought, if no one likes this show? It wasn’t until I got to college that I found out other people my age watch it!

Emily: Seriously! I got to college and I found my people. We went to this little club called the El-N-Gee in New London, and saw indie bands that are now national successes. I had friends who came over to my dorm room and watched Buffy every week. I even got a gig writing a music column for the school paper. Eventually I became editor-in-chief and got to boss all the writers around…but my favorite was always writing that column. It was just like my journal, except people would stop me in the cafeteria and ask me if I would write about their favorite indie band sometime.

Miranda: Today things are different. I meet lots of authors online who love Star Trek and want to talk about it. The Internet has changed the way people connect. For the better. For the much better. Of course I’m not only interested in Star Trek, I’m interested in lots of stuff that was considered “dorky” by my peers.

Emily: I love the Internet. It’s how I ended up in Austin, Texas. It’s how I found great writing communities online and off. It’s how I found out Hanson was playing in town a few weeks ago. It’s how I got involved with the YA-5 and how I get to share my love for books with teens, librarians and fellow writers.

Miranda: About a year ago, I met Emily online. We quickly figured out that we could’ve been great friends in high school. We share a love of silliness and the band Hanson and Austin Powers, among other things. One day not too long ago Emily wrote a blog post, a letter to her teenage self about, of course, Hanson. And I said it would be great if everyone did that on our YA-5 blog. But then Emily (the smart one) got the idea to invite others to participate, and tons of awesome authors have stepped up to write letters to themselves.

Did they relate to their peers growing up?

I bet I would’ve been a happier kid, if I’d had the internet when I was ten years old. Imagine if I’d had the means to communicate with authors such as Orson Scott Card or Terry Pratchett?

I hope you – kids, teenagers, adults – will enjoy the letters from authors on this blog, and I hope you’ll relate to them. And maybe find out you’re not alone in your geeky interests, whatever they might be.

Emily: Don’t think I’m going to let Miranda give me all the credit. She’s pretty smart, too. And she’s so right – if I’d had the internet when I was 12, I might not have felt so freaky for wishing I was an enchantress and curling up with my Xanth books when my friends were reading Lois Duncan. Not that I didn’t love Lois Duncan, but Piers Anthony knew how to pun. And I love puns. I hope some of these author friends and cohorts of ours write punny letters. And I hope you enjoy them and find something that makes you laugh or cry or maybe even both.

This project? Yeah, it’s gonna rock.

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E. Kristin Anderson grew up in Westbrook, Maine and is a graduate of Connecticut College. She has a fancy diploma that says “B.A. in Classics,” which makes her sound smart but has not helped her get any jobs in Ancient Rome. Once upon a time she worked for The New Yorker magazine, but she decided being a grown up just wasn’t for her. Currently living in Austin, Texas, Ms. Anderson is active in her local chapter of SCBWI and  as a poet has been published worldwide in around two dozen literary journals from the indie-queen Fuselit, to the more prestigious Cimarron Review. Her digital chapbook In Travel was chosen as a runner up by Mimesis in 2008. She is in the process of querying her first young adult novel and keeps herself busy writing and revising other novel projects.  She wrote her first trunk book at sixteen.  It was about the band Hanson and may or may not still be in a notebook at her parents’ house.

 

Miranda Kenneally is the author of SCORE, a contemporary YA novel about football, femininity, and hot boys, coming from Sourcebooks Fire in late 2011. She enjoys reading and writing young adult literature, and loves Star Trek, music, sports, Mexican food, Twitter, coffee, and her husband. Follow her on Twitter or Facebook. Miranda is represented by Sara Megibow at Nelson Literary Agency.

Tags: Nelson Literary Agency, Sourcebooks, YA, YA-5