By EelKat Wendy C Allen

NaNoWriMo Overachievers:
Top 25 Clichés in YA novels (A NaNoWriMo Post)

Top 25 Clichés in YA novels (A NaNoWriMo Post)

Posted on Saturday, November 7, 2009 | Comments Off

My Answer:

Was reading Top 25 Clichés in YA novels and had to respond to her list.

Lets see how many of these thing I did/do in real life, shall we?

I was a vegan teen who grew up on a poultry farm. My parents were very unsympathetic.

I have Autism – I have barely spoken a full paragraph in my entire life – I was constantly teased and bullied by students because of it and my only refuge was – huh – my art teacher’s class room – how odd – oh yeah, and my art teacher btw was Kevin Hawkes – a young, not yet famous Kevin Hawkes;

I was in his class the day his first book got accepted and he brought all the original canvases in to class to show us (the guy is a picture book author/illustrator who today has won nearly every award and children’s author and illustrator can win)

In my town of 12k people there is only 1 black family. Just one.

------(2017 UPDATE)-------

In 2009 when this article was written or town had 12,000 year round residents and bragged of being 99.9% white.

In 2017 it now has 3,000 year round residents...the 2,000 Gypsies, Romas, Travellers, and Jews who were here in the 1940s before any white people moved in, are still here. There are also now more then 100 black, Muslim, and other non-white families.

In 2017 our town of Old Orchard Beach, Maine is down to fewer then 25% white, and yet, we now also have the Ku Klux Klan in town, marching around chanting that the town of Old Orchard Beach is 99.9% white and they are going to make it 100% white. I think they need to open their eyes and look around.

------(END UPDATE)-------

I have a scar under my nose across my lip – the only remaining evidence that at age 16 I had to have plastic surgery after one of our roosters mauled my face with his spurs

Never heard that one before.

Not in real life or in a book.

Wonder where she got it from?

I was accused of being that girl – often.

Other girls refused to talk to me because of it. Thing was I had one boyfriend, who I started dating at age 12, and today 22 years later am still with and he’s still the only guy I’ve ever dated – the other guys that followed me around ignoring the other girls, got ignored by me because I already had the guy I wanted and just wanted these dolts to get off my trail

uhm . . . since when did THOSE names become dated? I could see if it was Rose, Opal, or Pearl, you know, names not seen since the 1930’s, but heck, new babies show up every day with the names she picked.

uhm . . . I’m a professional writer, so are several of my uncles and aunts, and heck Kevin Hawkes himself was my teacher when I was a teen! How many writers do you know who DO NOT have kids? Aren’t we supposed to *write what we know*?

I asked a black woman about this and she said this is only offensive IF only the black person is described as a food. It's not offensive if in the same book, white people are described as milk, cream, sugar, and Asians are described as honey, almond, caramel. She said when such descriptions are used consistently with all characters regardless of race, there is no problem, the problem is that usually, ONLY the black person gets described as food.

One of the girls in my Sunday School class in the 1980’s was named Hannah and she used to walk into class every day and the first thing she would say was :

“My name is Hannah, I can spell it the same way forwards and backwards, you can’t do that with your name!”.

In fact she said it to every one she meet all day long, every day, for years.

She continued to do it as a teenager.

And now as an adult... you guessed it, she still says it.

Geniuses are NOT adored by anyone.

They are nearly always an only child, if they have siblings, they were an adult before the siblings were born.

yeah – Did I mention I have Autism? My overall average IQ is 138. My literary IQ is 221. My math IQ is 75 which is why my overall score is so low.

Less than .03% of the world’s population has an IQ over 130.

Less then .001% of the world’s population has an IQ over 200.

I started reading and writing at age 3. I wrote volume 1 of the Twighlight Manor series in 1978 – yes, I was only 3 years old when I wrote that book. Adults used word “prodigy” and “indigo child” all the time. I hated it. Many times I thought about running away.

I knew one of them.

She grew up to become a criminal. A professional forger of documents. She makes a living stealing checl books and forging signatures.

about half the kids I knew growing up had one parent or the other – dead, gone to war, in jail/prison, or left home/divorced – in fact I was just about the only kid in Sunday school who actually had BOTH parents

I can’t sing, never could

many local guys wear not only mascara, but also fake eyelashes – it’s pretty common actually, and not just with teenaged guys either

Never heard that one before.

Not in real life or in a book.

Wonder where she got it from?

One of my favorite books of all time is Dracula and is written in diary format –

oh look, my favorite author Edgar Alan Poe wrote like that too! *shock* –

and guess what, the first books I ever read were the “Little House” Books, uhm, those were not just written as a dairy – it ACTUALLY WAS her dairy!

drives me crazy when I see people biting their nails – I can’t stand it, but wait, almost every one I know does it!

name a person who DOES NOT do this – name one – try it – you can’t

again - name a person who DOES NOT do this – name one – try it – you can’t

1.5 million new titles are published EVERY YEAR, 70% of all writers never write more than 3 books in their entire life time – that’s a lots of kids wanting to be writers when they grow up and hey, I was one of them!

I know several kids who do this. I always thought it weird that they did it, but there they are – doing just that

I know at least 30 red heads (natural) and many more who dye their hair red (and yes, 7 year old girls DO dye their hair)

There are lists in novels?

Really?

I've never seen one.

I wonder what books she reads?

but still, name a person who DOES NOT write lists – name one – try it – you can’t – and

– heck, she listed this on a LIST herself for crying out loud!!!!!!!

I do got to wonder, if so many of these things happen in real life, than how are they cliche in fiction? What is she saying that REAL LIFE is cliche and we shouldn’t be writing about it? What ever happened to the writing law of : Write what you know?

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Comments Offon Top 25 Clichés in YA novels (A NaNoWriMo Post)Posted in advice for fiction writers, Autism, conventional writing practices, EelKat, NaNoWriMo, national novel writing month, publishing, Wendy C. Allen, writing, writing advice, writing for children

My New Squidoo Lenses: Birthday Parties, Mermaids, Ponies, and Pickles

Posted on Sunday, February 24, 2008 | Comments Offon My New Squidoo Lenses: Birthday Parties, Mermaids, Ponies, and Pickles

I’m slowly getting my new lenses published. Here are the ones I published today:http://www.squidoo.com/BirthdayPartiesMermaids

http://www.squidoo.com/BirthdayPartiesPonies

http://www.squidoo.com/SourPickleI’ve still got about 40 more started that I haven’t published yet. I’m doing a whole series of birthday party lenses, each with a differant party theme. I searched and found tons of differant theme ideas, so now I’m building a bunch of lenses to go with them.

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