Jay Asher Quotes
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It seems like whenever a big newspaper or TV show talks about teen literature, they focus on dark books or vampire books. It's kind of this cliche. It seems like the only time adults pay attention is with that angle.
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Usually, when somebody really hates your book, they're not going to waste time on it, telling you what you need to work on.
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The Golden Rule will always be good advice!
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I've always loved brainstorming with other writers, and I consider having my work critiqued a part of that brainstorming.
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I don't know anything about bullying in Huntington Beach specifically, but I would assume it's very similar to other places.
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When me and my author friends who write about other difficult subject matter... when you hear from teens daily saying, 'Your book helped me or made me understand a friend better, what somebody else is going through,' you see the positive things.
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My friends and I did one of those 'Who's Hot and Who's Not' lists. Every school has those, and now they are online, which makes it even worse. It was one of those moments that I look back on a lot, and think that was horrible.
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There are things that aren't supposed to be comfortable to read, because those situations shouldn't be comfortable to discuss, but they still need to be discussed.
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One of the things I found is that no matter where in the country - poor communities, rich communities - everybody deals with very similar issues of bullying. It's pretty widespread.
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Fiction is an easy way to talk about issues: I think it feels less preachy. You can have the students discuss characters in the book as opposed to hypothetical situations, or as opposed to opening up about themselves, unless they really want to.
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I knew that part of the problem with sensitive issues is that, because they're uncomfortable to address, we have a hard time doing so honestly, if at all.
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Every action we have is going to have repercussions in ways we could not anticipate.
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There's no way to know exactly what someone's dealing with, no matter how open you are. You're just never going to know everything.
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If we know it's happening, and we're not having the discussion, we're contributing to the problem of making it seem like people can't open up.
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What you hear mostly people gripe about adaptations is, 'They took out this scene,' or, 'They had to condense these characters.' I understand why they have to do that. But if you had a favorite character, and now they've been melded together with another one, it's disappointing.
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Novels are a safe way to talk about things.
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Actually, I love trying to figure out why certain books become hits while others, which may be just as good, have trouble finding an audience.
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I thought I was going to be known for my humor. But then I had an idea for a story, which was absolutely not humorous. But, of course, that's the one that sells and becomes big.
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With traditional school visits, I also get to speak with people who haven't read my books and talk about my writing process as well as the serious aspects I write about.
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As a writer, my only responsibility is to tell a compelling story.
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The main character in the book is usually someone you're identifying with because the story is being told through this person's mind.
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I miss video games where the jump-kick was the trickiest combo to master.
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When somebody's face-to-face with you saying, 'I may not have been here had I not read your book,' how do you respond to that? The first several times I traveled, it was almost too much. I was totally grateful, but emotionally, it was really hard.
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When you write a book for publication, you're writing it for other people to read.