| By Lauren Taglienti |
Several young authors, those successfully published by publishing houses and those writing independently, are criticized for needing to live more life before writing. Members of my own family have told me this about my writing, which they have not read, and that of others. This belief tells me a couple things, but one of them is not that young people need to live more life in order to write. What it tells me about my family members, who are not writers, is that there is a common misunderstanding of the prerequisites to be a writer and who possesses those. What it tells me about the critics is that perhaps they have lived a privileged life and don't understand that age does not equal experience, or perhaps it's the overall societal culture preaching that age does not equal experience and the critics taking it to church, and to the bank. It also tells me that perhaps they could be projecting their own remorse for not following the same career path at such a young age. Perhaps they are afraid of the power and clear vision that the young generations have. Perhaps they are simply jealous. But enough of me psychoanalyzing strangers.
While myself and my generation of writers do not need a justifier to defend our writing, I would certainly like to assert that we are not going to stop writing. I do not subscribe to the idea that young people should not write because they haven't experienced enough, as I have lived more lives than my years can account for, and I am not alone in that. I do not claim to know everything as a young person, because at my age or any age, no one has it all figured out, nor should they. Never will you hear a voice from me pretending to be perfect, because I surely am far from it. But I can say that I've been through more than enough to authentically write. Here is just a breath of the experiences I, as a young person, have had:
I've been the underdog, worked to become the favorite, only to be the underdog again.
I've been unique and average.
I've been heartbroken, and I've broken hearts.
I've been hurt, and I've caused others pain.
I've been the refugee and the refuge.
I've been the caretaker for the sick and disabled, and I am the sick and disabled.
I've been the punk nearly failing out of school and the Valedictorian.
I've been kicked out of a school and gotten scholarships to another.
I've been the student and the teacher.
I've been the writer and the written about.
I've been accepted and ridiculed.
I've been the head of the household and the child.
I've been the enabler and the user.
I've lost my best friend to Death, and I've conquered Death to be the best friend to others.
I've died thousands of times, and I continue to live.
Or more simply put, in the words of Walt Whitman:
Do I contradict myself?
Very well then I contradict myself,
(I am large, I contain multitudes.)
Human experience is not linear or codified or without contradiction, regardless of age. Writing school repeatedly asserts that a writer writes best about what they know about. In a way, the only thing writers can write about is their own experience, as it is in some way reflected in even the most elaborate works of fantasy. I understand that my life exists in contradictions and multitudes, even though I believe that no one can truly understand life in all its breadth. That sentence alone is another contradiction and a multitude, and yet I am capable of writing about it, as that is what I know best about: my life.
I am not threatened by other writers of my generation, as we must lift each other up and encourage each other. Another young person's stories are not of greater value than mine and vice versa, just different. Surely others my age with different experiences than mine understand life as they experience it, full of its contradictions and multitudes, and can write about it if they want to, as well.
Why else would there be college courses built to help the young person understand the craft? Surely it wouldn't be solely for money, a scam to give young people false hope of pursuing their passion of writing. Surely the professors that have encouraged me do actually believe in me, and surely the systems of education have produced young writers cognizant of how to express the human condition collectively and individualistically.
It is one thing to say that a writer needs to work their craft more and dedicate more time to developing it, and perhaps with honing and development it improves over time. But it is another thing to criticize the way a person lives their life in relation to their writing. Through their lives and careers, perhaps writers will write about life from one perspective initially, live through an event that changes their perspective, and go on to write from a new perspective of a different depth and complexity than they had before. Not a greater complexity, just a different one. That only gives writers a beautiful arc in their career, and people love following a writer's arc, especially if major events in their life inform their work. If they didn't love an arc in a person's life, stories would never need to be written in the first place. But they do, and young writers are needed to tell their stories.
If young people need more experience to write, then what of Amanda Gorman, Sylvia Plath, Virginia Woolf, Emily Dickinson, Mary Shelley, Françoise Sagan, Rupi Kaur, S.E. Hinton, Hellen Keller, Alexander Pope, etc.? The list of impactful young writers goes on and on and comes from all different countries, time periods, and paths of life. Were they incapable of expressing the human condition in all its contradictions and multitudinousness? Is the impact they made suddenly erased because of their youth? Of course not. Just because they were young does not mean they understood life any less than their older counterparts and does not make them any less impactful. If anything, it speaks to the resonance their voices have with the masses. So why, I ask, would someone think that young writers need to be older before they write?
Work Cited
Whitman, Walt. Leaves of Grass. The Project Gutenberg,
Photo by George Milton from Pexels
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