There are these two young fish swimming along, and they happen to meet an older fish swimming the other way, who nods at them and says, “Morning, boys, how’s the water?” And the two young fish swim on for a bit, and then eventually one of them looks over at the other and goes, “What the hell is water?”
-David Foster Wallace

Last night I was participating in a hashtag chat on Twitter with a YA editor when I was struck, not for the first time, by how hard it can be to recognize that our own experience is not universal. First the topic of YA cover designs came up, and several tweeters expressed their preference for illustrated covers, as opposed to the photographic covers that are ubiquitous in YA these days. One of the editors in the chat mentioned that illustrated covers come across as very dated, which elicited some dismayed protests–until a Language Arts teacher chimed in with the observation that she found it difficult to get her students at all interested in books with illustrated covers.

You know, I kinda like illustrated covers myself, but her comment really drove home a point to me: we’re not the target audience. (By “we” I mean people in our thirties or thereabouts writing books for teens.) Sure, lots of grown-ups read YA. And, frankly, there is so much amazing writing in YA that there’s no reason not to, no matter what your age, and even if you’re not an aspiring author. Read it all you want, but remember that it’s not, at the end of the day, your literature. We may look around and see a lot of people our age reading YA and think that we’re a significant market, but we’re a drop in the bucket compared to the actual target audience. Publishers would be fools to put our preferences over those of teens.

More or less the same realization struck again later on in the chat, which is when I figured out what my next blog topic would be. 😉 The question of promotion came up, and the sending of ARCs to book bloggers was discussed. The same editor from before noted that her data suggested that book bloggers did not drive sales as powerfully as was often assumed. This led to at least a half hour digression, with people talking about how their blog had generated so many sales, or how they personally bought so many books based on blog recommendations.

“Anecdote” is not the singular form of “data.”

The folks who were trying to convince the editor of how powerful book blogs were couldn’t seem to understand that just because they buy based off blogger recommendations does not mean  this is how most teens select books to read. (It also made me think about how books make it into my wish list; it’s not through review blogs for me either.) I’m not sure what starts the buzz train rolling, but I suspect publishers are likely to have better data than bloggers are.

The same thing comes up in education. I see a lot of pedagogical theories that seem rooted in the notion that all kids are basically like we (teachers) (probably) were when we were kids. All kids are naturally curious. All kids want to learn. All kids benefit from taking notes using this particular format (and so we’re adopting it for the whole school). All kids benefit from “prewriting” papers to be written in this manner (and so we’re adopting it for the whole county). If all you know is how you were as a kid combined with your experiences with your own children, then it may be very difficult for you to accept, but your observations are not universal.

I wonder if the internet makes us more myopic in this way than we may have been a generation ago. (Not when it comes to pedagogy, of course. We’ve always been myopic there. 😉 ) One of the wonderful things about the internet is how it shows us that we are not alone–no matter how odd we are. For a lifelong nerd like me, finding out that there were people like me was a revelation. And I have this perception, in my day job, that quirky intelligent kids of today are empowered more than they’ve ever been before. But maybe it makes it too easy to forget that what we’re into isn’t what everyone’s into.

Are you a Browncoat? Me too. 🙂 When Browncoats rose up in outrage over the cancellation of Firefly, were you pretty sure they’d get it back on the air? When Serenity got the go-ahead, did you feel like vindication was at hand? Were you dismayed when it barely earned back its budget in its initial US run? You know we all supported “our” movie.

The problem is, nobody else cared. Astonishing as it was to believe, the rest of America did not share our fascination.

I think this is an important thing to remember for writers. I make no bones about the fact that I try to write stories I’d want to read.  I think this is pretty typical, but then maybe it makes us more susceptible than most to thinking that of course everyone wants what we want out of a story.

I don’t have any answers on that score. (Jeez, I hope you’re not coming around here looking for answers!) Maybe there isn’t really a way around that, when you’re writing. Or maybe if you’re enough in-tune with your target audience, you can internalize what they want. Or maybe it’s enough to write for you but not go around pontificating as though your tastes are everybody’s tastes.

Or you’re going to the special hell.