18 Middle Grade Authors on Writing Girl Characters After the Election
Source: Book Riot
“I woke up on the morning of November 8th feeling excited, optimistic, and more than a little nervous. I write books with complicated emotions and sometimes ambiguous endings, but on the morning of November 8th, I was not in the mood for ambiguity or complexity. I was in the mood for decisive victory.
I woke up on the morning of November 9th sick with the flu and sick of heart. It was days before I could bring myself to think about writing anything other than a Facebook post, an angry tweet, and email to a friend. Logically, I know that writing books for young readers is the long game of fostering the beliefs and actions I want to see in the world, but in the present unraveling, telling my little stories felt self-indulgent when there was bigger work to be done.
Of course, telling my stories is the work I best know how to do, and so I must return to it while at the same time working in other ways to effect change. I have never written a book to prove a point, to convince a reader, to shift a view. I am a selfish writer who tells the stories that interest me. I won’t now set out to write stories that will convince my readers to feel the way I feel, to act the ways I want to act. But I am a different person on this side of the election results, knowing the things I now know about my country, and so a different writer will be creating different stories. How could the books I write from here forward not reflect the anger and betrayal I feel, the “blinders off” sensation I’ve been sitting with?”