Can I Quote John Cougar Mellencamp, Referene Glee, and Tell the Truth in a Single Post?

Try me.

So yes, I still watch Glee. On TV. Live. It isn't what it used to be, but my children both love the singing, and the underlying messages are still important. So I allow it. I'm usually drinking in the corner, revising, and paying scant attention to the audio.

Anyway, there was a moment in last night's episode (please tell me this was a new episode, and my DVR did not escape from 1984) when the show quoted John Cougar, and in spite of my never being a fan of Bon Jovi, it actually made sense to me.

I've thought a lot about what I write, and why I write it, lately. Some of it has to do with friends and mentors like Andrew and Joe, who never set out to write YA novels, and yet ended up writing books that broke the mold.

For me, I've always wanted to write a book, and I've had hundreds of ideas from high Tolkienesque fantasy to juvenile MG humor, but none of them were ever novel worthy. Then the WM idea struck me, and it seemed like it was the one.

I'm going on too long here, because that's what I do, but to get back to the quote, this is why I write YA, or at least why I might have written the book I wrote, when I didn't even realize it was YA:

Hold on to sixteen, as long as you can. - John Cougar Mellencamp, from Jack and Diane.

At first glance, this is a simple, innocuous line.

But anyone who writes YA, whether on purpose or not, knows different.

This shit matters.

Let me put that quote on a line of it's own.

Hold on to sixteen, as long as you can.

Do you get it?

This shit is serious.

Anyway, I want to talk about what this means to me, and why it matters when it comes to writing books.

I write the longest blog posts when I break paragraphs at every. Single. Sentence.

For me, 16 was the age of innocence and the age of insolence at the same time. My mother was long dead, and my father was long gone, and I had been angry at the world, and defying every rule it ever gave me for years. Every adult I'd ever known had abandoned me to my own devices, or abused me with their sickness.

And yet I carried on. I lived life passionately. Because being young is all about hope, and despair, and poignancy. It's about flipping the bird to authority, and thumbing your nose at conventional wisdom. It's about aching to be touched by someone who loves you, and about drowning your sorrow in cigarettes and booze and Nine Inch Nails. It's about reading your favorite novel for the first time, it's about driving for the first time, it's about freedom.

Or at least it was for me.

There are so many firsts. First love, first kiss, first smoke, first sex. Nothing you do again will ever be as cool (or perhaps as terrible).

Later, when you're all grown up, adulthood is about bills, and 401ks, and tax returns, and ethics competency training. When you're old, getting in the car to go to the grocery store is a chore. When you're young, getting in a car to drive anywhere is an adventure.

When you're old, going to work can feel like being shackled to an oar on a rotting slave galley out of old Volantis. When you're young, going to school can feel like solving a mystery.

When you're old, the days fly by like frames in a film reel. When you're young, each day is like an ocean, teeming with life, and full of possibility.

So ... I realize this is starting to get a little depressing, and it isn't meant to. I mean I might be a jaded, confused, and sad old man, but I do still have beauty and truth in my life. That isn't the point, though.

The point is, I write YA books about young people, that may or may not be for young people, because being young is exciting. Because being young is terrible and beautiful. Because being young is being full of life.

Because I'm trying to hold on to sixteen, as long as I can.