Lynne Stringer – Author & Editor

This week was my birthday. I’m not going to tell you how old I was but it was one of those birthdays where I’ve gone over the hump and now am going down the other side towards my next big celebration, you know, one of those ages that end in a zero. 🙂
In the lead-up to this birthday I was feeling down about that. Sometimes it’s hard to deal with the realisation that I’m getting steadily older. I don’t usually feel that much older, and in the end, that was the thing I clung to – I need to remember that as long as I’m not feeling old, things aren’t so bad. My hairdresser has something on her wall that says, ‘How old would you be if you didn’t know how old you are?’ I think that’s a great way of looking at it.
Also, as an author, no matter how old I get, I know I can always live vicariously through my protagonists. I don’t think my age is the reason I constantly write young adult novels; the fact is, I enjoy the genre. However, it’s an added benefit that I get to feel that age again by looking at the world through their eyes and seeing things the way they see them. In the novel I’m currently working on, Raydon’s Muse, my protagonist starts out as a bit of a spoiled brat. However, I can’t leave her that way, and I hope I’m translating her journey in such a way that the reader will enjoy seeing her develop.
And all the time, her journey, and the journey of my other protagonists, helps me feel a lot younger than I am. 🙂

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2 Responses

  1. Haha – living vicariously through our characters is a benefit of being an author. Do you find you sometimes take on the speech patterns of your characters? I did that when I was writing my first, as yet unpublished, YA novel. in my second book the main character is in her early twenties and I’m finding the biggest challenge is to think like a millennial 😊.

    1. I don’t think I’ve started talking like them yet but sometimes I find myself thinking like them! 🙂