I would like to start off by making a slight amendment to the Freaky Friday title. It was pointed out to me that an aspiring WRITER is someone who wants to write but hasn’t done it. Everyone who has been interviewed so far, is a full-fledged WRITER and an aspiring AUTHOR. I stand corrected. See how good I am with revisions LOL! Now back to our regularly scheduled program…
If you’ve seen the movie Freaky Friday, you know that its premise is about change and growth through role reversal. For my Friday Blog entry I thought it would be interesting to interview aspiring writers; the same writers who spend lots of time reading the interviews of published authors and dreaming of the day when they might get their book on the shelves…
Mike Jung (Facebook) is my first interview with someone I have not met in person. This was a little bit exciting for me. We’d bumped into each other on Facebook and The Blue Boards. I didn’t know for sure how this was going to go, so I sent out some feelers.
Hey Mike~
It’s Kim from the Blue Boards and Facebook…you know the girl trying
to steal your birthday muffins. I wanted to take you up on that offer
to do a Freaky Friday interview if you were still interested. You
would be my first interview with someone I haven’t met face to face
yet…but you had me at muffins LOL! If that wasn’t enough I thought
you were rather impressive in the online YA discussion about
Responsibility on the Blue Boards. So if you are interested….I was
wondering if you could tell me and my very small following of readers
a little bit about yourself.
Thanks
Kim
My book is called THE CAPTAIN STUPENDOUS FAN CLUB, it’s out with beta readers for a final pass right now, and I plan to submit to agents within the next month, feedback willing. It’s middle grade, with superheroes, supervillains, big robots and twelve-year-old fanboys. I’ve had one close call with an agent, and I have referrals to a couple others. It’s my first attempt at a book. I used to write/play/record songs as a hobby (NOT a pro musician), and my degree is in studio art, so I have a pretty long history of creative activities, but this is my first try at starting up a real professional career as a creative. I work as the web editor at a small liberal arts college in Northern California, which keeps me plugged into the web technology thing in a different way from the Twitter/Facebook/Blueboard stuff I do as a writer. I’m married, and have a 3-year-old daughter. In the seventh grade I once wrote a paper for a computer science class that turned into a story about a boy and his sentient computer – I sadly don’t remember that teacher’s name, but I remember that she was a good soul who very gently reproached me for getting caught up in the story and not finishing the actual assignment. In 1997 I took a class in children’s book illustration at UC Berkeley extension – Julie Downing was the teacher – and while it was interesting and fun, it showed me that I’m not actually a pro-caliber illustrator, and I let the idea of writing languish until my daughter was born in 2006, when I realized it was now or never. I read comic books obsessively as a kid, mostly by going through my older brother’s massive collection of old-school Marvel and DC titles, and while I almost completely stopped with comic books after that, they really formed a core part of my creative foundation.
How’s that for a start?
WOW-that is a great start. You’re multitalented and your book sounds great. I love the concept. My youngest son is a superhero and I’m sure he would be smitten. You and I’ve had the pleasure of meeting through Facebook (with some virtual birthday muffins) and through Verla Kay’s Blue Boards where you weighed in on a very interesting discussion about the responsibility of the authors who write for Young Adults. We may have to return to that topic, but first I have another question. It used to be, that the virtual world writer’s lived in, was only in their imaginations. I’m curious as to what you think about the quickly growing and changing virtual world we find ourselves in now. In fact, we may have never “met” without it.
Virtual world we live in now, hmmm…. I have to say, as a person who is A. a textbook example of an introvert and B. a writer, I LOVE LOVE LOVE all the opportunities that currently exist for communication in the virtual world. I think the virtual world does have its pitfalls, the biggest one for me being the tendency to do too much of my communications online and not enough in person. There are real and severe limitations to online communications, after all, and the fact that I’m often not the most graceful or eloquent person in an actual brick-and-mortar blood-and-guts room is actually a strong reason for me to get out there as much as I can. That having been said, the Twitterverse/blogosphere/webshamalamadingdong definitely provides channels for communication that can’t be replicated in the genuine space-time continuum. I’ve become involved with online communities that include people from all over the world. I’m able to fire off my random silly thoughts and ideas to several hundred people at any given moment – sometimes one or two of ’em even respond! The sheer tonnage of information out there in cyberspace is staggering and daunting and wonderful. And the single greatest thing about communicating in all of these online venues is that you HAVE to communicate via the written word. Sure, you can use photos and sound and video too, and those are all terrific additions to your quiver of tools, but the bedrock tool, the one that you’ll be using the most, is the written word. To have a real presence in the virtual world you have to write. You have to write fast, and you have to write a lot. I like that.
Since face-to-face interaction tends to be a bit more challenging, (I never would have guessed, you are very easy to hang out with in the cyber world) I was wondering if you’ve been to any conferences or have any plans to attend? I ask for purely selfish reasons; hoping to bump into you sometime. :o)
I also wanted to return to that interesting topic of responsibility in writing for YA. You were very eloquent on the Blue Boards. Now that I know you have a Middle Grade book in the pipes, I was wondering if your thoughts on responsibility changed with writing for a slightly younger crowd?
I’ve been to two or three regional SCBWI events (Northern California, East Bay), last year I went to SCBWI nationals in LA, and yeah, I do plan to keep attending these events – it’s hard, money- and time-wise, so I need to be picky, but I’d like to bump into each other and chat in real time too! I’m dead-set on going to SCBWI LA next summer, just because it was SUCH a transformative experience for me in ’08. All the online media stuff has given me more reason to go to these events too, because there are now all kinds of people who I’ve only met online and would love to meet in person! I went to Cindy Pon’s signing for SILVER PHOENIX in San Francisco and got a chance to meet a few folks from the Enchanted Inkpot and the Blueboards, and despite my bashfulness I want to keep doing that.
I do feel differently about writing for the MG audience as opposed to writing for the YA audience, although the word “responsibility” still gives me some trouble because it does imply that there’s a single, concrete, universal standard of values that we all adhere to. That’s obviously not true – spending 30 seconds flipping through a newspaper will tell you it’s not true, talking to anyone about religion or politics will tell you it’s not true.
And at their core, the principles I have for YA fiction hold true for MG fiction – be true to the characters, be true to the story, be genuine, be honest, don’t condescend, respect the reader’s intelligence, respect the reader’s choices. I think the two audiences function on different physical, emotional and psychological levels, however, just because of the difference in age, and that must be taken into account. For example, I don’t have any problem with the idea of sexuality being explored in an open, honest, unflinching way in YA – exploring and coming to grips with sexuality is a huge part of the young adult experience. I wouldn’t approach it the same way for a book about a 10-year-old character, because 10-year-olds are generally not having those experiences – they’re not going through puberty, they’re not facing the same social pressures, they’re not having the same kinds of conversations. If it was germane to the story I’d probably focus on the 10-year-old’s reaction to others who are going through those experiences, and try to zero in on what a my 10-year-old character’s understanding about it is. I think that’s the key – what is a middle-grade child’s understanding of difficult topics? Bulimia, for example – how would a 10-year-old kid perceive a family member going through such a situation? They would likely not see as much of what happens, and they would definitely not comprehend all the emotional and psychological complexities of the problem. But they’d see some of it, wouldn’t they? They’d see the weight loss. They’d see the parents’ distress. They’d sense the shifting emotional states, they’d notice the changes in behavior.
To go back to using the word “responsible,” troubling though it is, I don’t think being responsible means avoiding hard topics, even in MG fiction. I think it means presenting them in a way that’s genuine and relevant for your audience, which means presenting them in the same way a reader of that age might experience them.
Oh Boy! I’m planning on going to SCBWI LA next year. Now I’m extra excited. We will have to meet up and have muffins LOL! I have to admit, I’ve become a big fan of your thoughtful musings on the subject of author responsibility in YA/MG writing. It is a beautiful reminder to write with the eyes of your reader in mind.
Before I let you go, I was wondering if you would give us your top five books and a little insight into how they’ve influenced you?
I’ll bring the muffins, Kimberly! And thank you for the kind words. This has definitely been fun, thank you so much for inviting me to do it!
Okay, top five books and their influence on me: just FYI, I’m pulling these out of the big sloppy broom closet of my mind, so rhyme and reason may be in short supply, and there’s no guarantee that the books will match up with any other “favorite books” list I’ve written anywhere else. Which is probably fine because for crying out loud, who’s gonna bother to go looking?
THE WIND IN THE WILLOWS by Graham Greene: I remember reading this over and over and over as a kid. I remember it feeling so multifaceted, funny and sad and apprehensive and pensive and frightening and lonely – I couldn’t get enough of it. Christmas at Mole’s house was one of the most warm and cozy chapters ever, and it’s been a goal of mine to one day inject that kind of emotional loveliness into a story of my own. Still working on it.
ENDER’S GAME by Orson Scott Card: I read this in high school, and have periodically re-read it over the years, and it stands in my mind as an example of a story that’s just flawlessly executed. It’s perfectly self-contained (although I like the sequels too, some more than others), the narrative never flags, the characters are compelling, and the quality of the prose is superb. I find inspiration (if not a model of working that’s realistic for me) in the story that Card thought about the book non-stop for a couple of years, then wrote the whole thing in one explosive two-week burst.
THE AGONY AND THE ECSTASY by Irving Stone: Hmm, which thing doesn’t belong here? This is not a kid’s book, of course, and I was never a drop-dead fan of Stone’s prose stylings, but in college I found a copy of this in a used bookstore and it immediately sank its hooks into me for other reasons. I’m a big Michelangelo fan, so it was great in that way. It was also one of the first times I can remember reading about someone’s creative process and really latching on to the idea that the artistic impulse and ideas are out there, it’s just a matter of uncovering them. I thought of it again after watching Elizabeth Gilbert’s TED speech about the cosmic pool of creative genius that we all tap into from time to time, which I thought was very related to Michelangelo’s idea that he didn’t create the sculpture, he was just able to see it and chip away the excess marble.
HOW TO EAT FRIED WORMS by Thomas Rockwell: Because how could you not love a book about eating worms? I just thought it was so, so great that a book dealt explicitly with the consumption of night crawlers, but in later years I realized the true genius of this book was in its character development. The boys in this book are REAL BOYS – they’re capable of laziness, merciless cruelty, deceit, fear, violence, grandstanding, self-pity, braggadocio, and more, yet they can still be friends at the end of the final page. I strive to make my own characters as real as Thomas Rockwell’s.
THE LIGHT FANTASTIC: A DISCWORLD NOVEL by Terry Pratchett: I laughed so hard I thought I was gonna injure myself, and I loved, loved, loved Terry Pratchett for doing that. And he did it with a FANTASY NOVEL! That blew my mind, because every fantasy novel I’d read before (and I’d read a LOT) was just deadly serious. Not that it was bad to be serious, but this intense, playful humor was so new to me.
Again, Kimberly, thanks for having me, I’m flattered and honored to be your latest interviewee. And if I see you at SCBWI LA next year (or someplace else), the muffins are on me!
Those were some great book choices. I recently read HOW TO EAT FRIED WORMS to my three sons. It’s even better when you read it to boys LOL! Mike I can’t thank you enough for being a contestant. If you are now a HUGE fan of Mike (I KNOW you are!) Then stop by and friend him on Facebook. Don’t forget to introduce yourself and bring the muffins.
*I would also like to add that Mike and I got those fantastic virtual muffins from Amy Lynn Spitzley (Facebook) and I’m hoping that she will cook up something good for one of our future Freaky Friday interviews.
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What a fun and fantastic interview! Thanks to you and Mike! 🙂
Thanks so much Larissa ;o)
Great interview. It's great to get to know Mike.