Money Issues in YA vs Adult Literature

Note: This piece is one I originally posted on 21 May 09 on my other blog, Typeset World. It is reproduced here because I've been struggling with the same issue lately and felt it was worth reposting.

Generally, I believe that children's literature (including Young Adult) holds more positive qualities than adult literature does, but this isn't the case in all areas. The biggest thing for me, lately, is that in regards to money, adult books seem more realistic. There's a simple reason for this: adults worry about money more. Because they spend their lives working for that money, and they have to pay the bills for water, heat, electricity, medical, insurance, etc etc etc. Then they have to buy groceries and toilet paper and rubber bands. Whatever. The point is, adults are constantly aware of how much money is going in, and how much money is going out. This is reflected in book catered to the adult audience. We see many issues of money in this genre: characters needing to pay rent, or trying to get a raise, worrying about how they'll pay their medical bills whenever something goes wrong.

In children's books, you don't see this. First off, because children don't pay their own expenses, they rely on their parents. This doesn't mean that children don't worry about money. When do we get to read the stories about the child who hides in the bathroom for the first ten minutes of lunch period so they can be at the end of the food line so that no one is around to hear them when they tell the lunch lady they get a free lunch? The story of the kid who has to buy all their clothes at the second-hand store and purchase all their shoes a size or two larger because they can't afford new things all the time? The kid who doesn't go to birthday parties just so they don't have to show up without a gift because the family couldn't afford one?
We don't read these stories very often. I think the main reason of this is that children who are reading the books don't want to read about those problems all the time--especially if they're living them. They might just want to escape the problem, put themselves in place of the main character, and live like royalty for a few hours. That's totally understandable.

With YA however, I see it a little differently. Young adults are no longer children, but not yet adults. They're somewhere in the middle, age-wise, and in this issue as well. Or, at least, in my opinion, they should be. That doesn't mean that they are. This is the age, especially in the later teens, that one gets their first job and starts to pay some things on their own. Sure, these things may just be movie tickets or new cds (assuming they even buy hard copies anymore), but it's their own money, and they need to keep track of it. Even still, you don't see this as much as you would expect. Yes, in John Green's Looking For Alaska this issue is tackled through The Colonel, who is always having Pudge pay for his cigarettes because he can't afford them. We go to his trailer even. But the thing is, the Colonel, much as I love him, is not the main character here. He's not the narrator either. It's all Pudge, and Pudge has the money to pay for cigarettes for both of them, to pay for McDonald's, and his family can easily afford the private school. Generally, the main characters have money. This may also go back to how poverty-stricken children want to escape their money issues through literature, but it may just be a way to make things easier on the author. Things are so much easier to get going if the character can afford them.

Still, there are books that address these issues, I'm not saying there aren't. Suite Scarlett by Maureen Johnson is a great example. The family is having financial troubles and are barely keeping their head above water at the point where the story begins. The hotel is beginning to fall into disrepair and we see the ways this impacts the family members. It's great, and more than that, it's believable. It's something that some of us can relate to. So why aren't there more books out there like this one? Why do our main characters always have to be upper middle class with spare cash and cars (even if they're not new)? Will books featuring a few money issues (even small ones) become more popular in our current economic situation, or will we see rise to more books like Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, where the poor boy finds the golden ticket--a way to rise above the current situation? I'd love to hear your thoughts on anything mentioned. Leave them in the comments.

The Conqueror; Organization is a Battle

Total word count: 13,729
Words written today: 0

Yup, zero words written today, I know. Same for yesterday. My reason for yesterday is that I had a paper & a presentation to prepare for my Colonial Literature class and I had gotten home late from work/school. My excuse today is that I spent my hour off writing this post on the marketing behind the new Twilight book instead of working on my novel. Why? Because I'm not sure where to go next.

Which brings me to my topic: organization. Not all of the work that goes into a novel is writing. Sometimes you need to stop, take a moment, and figure things out. I have so many ideas bouncing around in my head, build up from the last 6 years since I dreamed up this novel, and I don't know where half of them go anymore. There is a huge hole in my narrative, some of these plots no longer exist, some need to be taken out to spare the world. So tonight instead of writing I went down into The Archives, which is the name I have for this semi-organized mess in my room where I keep all my writing things. I have finished copies, rough drafts, edits, & random loose scraps with notes that make no sense anymore. Tonight I went through, found everything that related to The Conqueror and refreshed my memory on everything. Also in my room I have a bulletin board with all the major plot points from the original idea still up there from 4ish years ago. It makes me wince to look at some times. I took all the scraps & I typed them up into two doc files on my laptop, for characters & misc ideas. I also have a paper from earlier tonight covered in questions about where am I going or notes on what things I definitely need to work towards.

I haven't figured out much, but it's a work in process. Hopefully this weekend and next Monday (no school!) I can do more work on these. For right now, I need to work on the outline for my research project in Ethics, and tomorrow is devoted to a literary review of all my sources for Comm Theory. College is not all parties, my friends.


EDIT: I finished my outline fairly quickly & had about 12 minutes before bedtime. I still don't know what's going to happen next (it's less a matter of what will be in the chapter as which chapter is next, narrator-wise) but I didn't want to spend a lot of time figuring it out, so I put in a blank chapter and moved past it. This was a chapter I had almost forgotten until I went through The Archives, but one I think needs to say. So I wrote 224 words before midnight & before I got word blocked.

Help: What is the word for when someone goes "aargh?" Like out of frustration? There is a word for it. It is a word I can't think of. Please to be helping me with it.

Total word count: 13,953
Words written today: 224