My Adventures in Writing: Mary Kole

One of the most infuriating things about writing an essay on a subject you know, is not being able to say things without referencing them. Even if you know it's a fact, you have to find somewhere official that states it. Even worse than that is having your own opinion on the subject but unless someone else has already had the same thought, you can't say it.

When I was writing an essay about relationships in YA, my tutor recommended Mary Kole's Writing Irresistible Kidlit. I flicked through it, looking for quotes to back myself up, and I found them. In abundance. And not just quotes to back me up, quotes that stated perfectly things that I already knew just from reading and writing YA.

Mary Kole has such great insights into how young people feel and what they want to read about. So many of the pages I marked were because she managed to sum up everything I've ever felt about my teenage years and YA books. 

As an aspiring writer, there's some invaluable advice, ranging from things as simple as word-count to the tricky business of writing a novel that young readers will believe in.

I haven't managed to read it cover to cover yet, but I'm excited to. More than that, I'm excited to apply her ideas to my own writing and see where it takes me.