I currently have two short stories on the go, firstly the one I was working on last week but the second is a YA story for the Blackpool signing in August. I wouldn’t normally have two going at once but circumstances took over.
Last week I slipped down a few steps and have a lovely bruise on my leg and bruised ribs. As a result of this I struggled to sit at the computer to write so I spent some time platting away at the YA story.
Every genre has its own challenges and YA is one I have never tackled. As many of you know I tend to write darker subjects so writing a story where no one dies horribly provides its own set of challenges. I have written tamer stories for anthologies with very little spice or fade to black sex so that is less of an issue.
The main challenge is putting myself into the mind of a teenager, first life has changed a lot since I was one, and secondly although my son is a teenager is autism means that I can hardly pick his brain. The plot of the story is your basic boy meets girl, girl thinks boy is an idiot, boy does something heroic and girl decides to give him a go. I am setting the story in a riding school, which does mean I can pick the brains of the girls up at the stables where Preeya now lives, and Preeya, along with a couple of the girls may get name checks in there.
The first lot of questions I need to be asking is would a girl give their number to a guy now or their snapchat details? How long do they wait to respond to messages? When I was a teenager there were no mobile phones and dating was done mainly in school hours with the occasional meet up to go to the cinema at the weekend. I am not sure if it was because we had less freedom in some ways as teenagers or if it was simply that we hung around in crowds more.
Hopefully by next week I will have both stories finished and be back to writing novels, but I have a signing coming up so I am busy preparing for that at the minute too.
Paula Acton 