Yesterday was Senior Projects Day at my university, where all the graduating seniors present the work they’ve done for their capstone projects. First of all, I want to give a shoutout to all of my incredible friends for their brilliant and thoughtful presentations yesterday- ya’ll put me to shame. However, this is my website, so I’m gonna talk about MY project, and my thoughts surrounding my presentation/my near-final product.
First, a round of thank yous. Thank you to my family, who has supported me more than I can ever repay during my four years here, even when I was convinced I wanted to drop out. Thank you to everyone I didn’t know who showed up for my presentation yesterday and laughing at my jokes, even though I know you were there for an assignment and not for me. Thank you to the people I DID know at my presentation, ALSO for laughing at my jokes, as well as for asking great questions during my allotted five minutes. I’ll speak to some of the specific questions that were asked in a bit, but the point of this paragraph is to offer a big giant THANK YOU to everyone ever. You all are great and I love you and I would not be who I am without you.
Next, my project. For creative writing majors, our capstone is broken up into two parts: a critical essay and a creative piece (or collection of creative pieces, like a series of short essays or poems or something). The two are usually strongly related, and the critical essay really acts as a very long, detailed introduction to the process of writing your creative piece. My critical essay was about epistolary young adult novels and why the epistolary form, far from being a “technical dead end” as some critics have claimed, is actually a really important style when looking at the coming of age stories told in young adult novels. An epistolary novel is a novel written in a series of documents (that’s my definition: it used to be “letters” but we don’t have a better word and so I decided to just go with it. Plus, diaries are like letters to yourself and emails are just 21st century letters) That’s the gist of the academic portion, and I don’t really care to go into it, because what I really want to talk about is my actual creative piece, because I’m super duper proud of it.
For those of you who don’t already know, I decided to turn in the first three chapters of my OWN young adult epistolary novel, entitled The Secret Life of Jane. Here’s the synopsis:
“The Secret Life of Jane†seeks to explore a coming-of-age paradigm in a similar-but-updated epistolary format through the character Hailey Jane Harper’s blogs and emails during her final semester of high school. After finishing five months of intensive therapy for stress-induced self-harm, Hailey’s life isn’t about to get any easier. Unfortunately, because her friends, family, and over 1000 dedicated followers read her public blog, she’s unable to share all of her secrets and pain because she’ll hurt the people closest to her. Thus she creates “The Secret Life of Jane,” a blog in which she and all the people in her life are given pseudonyms and she can without restraint say what is on her mind. Hailey still maintains her original blog, HailstoneHarper.com, thus creating an interesting contrast between what she’s telling the people who follow her and what she reveals on her anonymous, private blog. As her last year of high school progresses and tension escalates, her blogs begin to tell the tale of a girl who may not be ready for a post-therapy life. The story is, obviously, epistolary, entirely told in blogs, Facebook posts, emails, and text messages.
As many of you can probably guess, this story is largely based on real life, although there are important differences I’ll explore in more detail later. The necessary takeaway here is that while this novel is definitely inspired by real life, all characters, recognizable as they may be to people I actually knew, are entirely fictional. In the novel Hailey has a debate partner, a mean friend, a boy she met from Facebook, a friend in Afghanistan, etc etc, just like I had at the time, but the people in Hailey’s world are NOT who I knew. There are similarities, but no direct parallels, so please don’t read any more into this story or its characters than what’s written on the pages.
Moving on, I’m so dang proud of my novel. It’s come a long way from my first draft over a year and a half ago. During my presentation yesterday, I spent ten minutes talking about my process writing the thing (challenges, strategies, implications, etc), then ten minutes actually reading from it, which was super fun. My presentation room was packed, which I’m still thrilled by, and everyone has been incredibly complimentary and enthusiastic. Again, thank you.
Now, to the questions. At the end of my 20 minute presentation, the moderator gives five minutes for any clarification or followup questions, and we actually ran out of time during mine. One of my favorite questions came from my friend Tiara, who remembered back from freshman year when I was finishing off that book Eugenia I started during Bri 2.0 and asked if I would ever revisit that story. I am so touched not only because she’s read my blog for four years, but that she remembers that silly dystopian novel draft I threw up in weekly increments. Tiara, you’re great. Thank you.
My other favorite question came from Quinn (boyfran), who asked, because this project is so closely based on my own experiences, where did my character and I diverge? How is Hailey different from Bri? After I gave him a quick answer, I thought about it some more and I wanted to discuss it.
First of all, before anyone has a heart attack about the blurb up there (specifically related to the “stress-induced self harm” bit), I have never self-harmed. I have never cut myself, I have never pulled out my own hair (Hailey’s self-harm of choice), nor have I ever seriously considered it. I was in therapy for approximately the same amount of time as Hailey, during the same timeline, but I was there purely for emotional distress/panic attacks.
Really, though, here’s the big difference between Hailey and me: I am more mature, but Hailey is more interesting. And I don’t mean that in a self-deprecating way- I greatly prefer being mature over being interesting. Let me explain:
When something bad happens to me (my parents get a divorce, I get my heart broken, etc etc), I get sad, I get mad, and then I complain about if for two years before [mostly] getting over it. I might rant and rave, but I won’t actually DO anything. The only time I take any kind of action is when something bad happens to someone I care about (my junior year of college I threatened someone with bodily harm very loudly while in public because he was acting rapey towards a friend of mine).
Hailey, on the other hand, is much more actively reactive. For example, at one point in the novel, to spite one character, Hailey lies to her parents about driving to visit a family friend and instead takes a detour for a couple of days at her emotionally manipulative internet “boyfriend”‘s dorm room. I might have lied to my parents (mostly by omission) about meeting MY emotionally manipulative internet “boyfriend” for a couple of hours, but I never left city limits and had two nearby backup plans if things went south or whatever.
I have a lot of interesting experiences (traveling all over the world, participating in a wide variety of activities), but my reactions to things are, for the most part, pretty boring and vanilla. I generally make good choices, at least now that I’m in my 20s (oh god I feel so old saying that), and that’s not very interesting in a character.
Furthermore, Hailey is a lot more clingy than I am. I’ve definitely had my clingy moments (see: very melodramatic/passive aggressive blogs decrying the loss of a close friend or relationship and subsequently emailing that person the link), but I’m growing out of that, and I was never as bad as poor Hailey Jane. She spends the entire novel texting her absentee Army friend Harvey while he serves in Afghanistan, after he stopped talking to her right before she entered therapy. And I don’t mean she sends him messages once in a while; I mean she sends him messages CONSTANTLY to rant or vent or accuse him of various things. She also has a hard time going more than five seconds without talking to people, which for Hailey usually means she’s blogging on her secret blog, hoping to get a rise or a response from her sole reader, Sam. I, on the other hand, am very content not speaking to another human for days at a time, directly OR indirectly.
Finally, to wrap this up, Hailey is also a lot angrier than I am. That’s saying a lot, because I am a very angry person. But as we’ve already established, Hailey is more interesting than me, thus her anger is also more interesting than mine. Everything is a personal attack to her, even well-intentioned, non-confrontational advice. And because of how much angrier she is than I am, she generally responds to confrontation with more anger, whereas I, in most cases, let it go until I can rant about the confrontation to a neutral party later. I just don’t care, but Hailey? Hailey cares about EVERYTHING.
By way of conclusion, here’s the last minute or so of my presentation:
The danger of being a young adult in this day and age is that it’s hard to leave toxic relationships in the past because of the ease of staying in touch. You can delete someone from Facebook but there’s still instant messaging, texting, email, and any of the other thousand social networks that exist today. The Secret Life of Jane seeks not to demonize young adults and their inability to separate themselves from noxious relationships, but to explain and explore why, in a lot of ways, it’s not their fault. The internet has added a whole new puzzle piece to how relationships and identities are formed, and I think it’s important to recognize, instead of discredit, that new piece.
Though I only got to heavily edit the first three chapters of my book, it is the most proud I’ve ever been of any piece of writing. It’s deeply personal, equal bits funny and dramatic, and something I think I would have enjoyed reading at Hailey’s age. The Secret Life of Jane is a story about a teenage girl who defines herself by her relationships with other people, and when those relationships change or go south, she struggles with how her identity has to or shouldn’t have to change as well. She’s melodramatic, silly, and impulsive. Hailey Jane Harper may not be the most ingenious or insightful or deep protagonist, but she’s genuine, and that’s all I’ve ever wanted to write.
