EXCERPT from "Keeping It Real: Mixing Truth and Fiction in YA" by Jennifer Brisendine in Many Genres, One Craft: Lessons in Writing Popular Fiction
If you know even one pre-teen, ‘tween, or full-blown teenager, you recognize how difficult it is to pull the proverbial wool over their eyes. You can’t easily persuade the average young adult that a loss of privileges is really harder on you than on him, or that she should clean her room for the sense of accomplishment, or that yes, he will need to know the finer points of the quadratic equation in his everyday life.
Selling young adults on fiction is equally challenging… no matter how fascinating a story you tell.
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Jennifer Brisendine's creative non-fiction appears in the Seal Press anthology The Maternal Is Political, and her essays have appeared in LiteraryMama and the Mom Writer's Literary Magazine. After ten-plus years in the high school English classroom, she currently works as a freelance editor and writer while continuing to pursue fiction and non-fiction projects. She lives in southwestern Pennsylvania with her husband, two sons, and a petite 100-pound Great Dane.
