Guest Post: Nova Lee Zaidan - Musings of a Blogder

Hey all! Today I have Nova Lee Zaidan on the blog. She's talking about teen writers, experience, and taking chances. Check out her article and look into her blog. She's a cool person and I'm happy to have her on the blog! ;o)

Talent Over Experience? by Nova Lee Zaidan

I wanted to start this little article-of-sorts by warning you that I have potential to write like a boring history teacher. I also really want to thank Miss (or Mrs.) Shark for agreeing to let me post here! So, I’m going to start with some introductions: My name is Nova and I’m on the not-as well known section of book bloggers. I run a blog called Musings of a Blogder, but that really isn’t as important now.

So this Guest Post will be all about teen writers. I, myself am a teen writer. You can leave some guesses as to how old I am in the comments if you want. (Maybe finish reading first?) But I feel that teen writers should have more opportunities and not be judged for their age.

I would also like to talk about my experience as a writer in general.

So, there are actually a lot of teen writers. That’s not to say that all are good at writing and have maturity of a full adult, but it also goes the other way. Also, even some fully grown adults don’t show maturity. My opinion from this is actually that I find it amazing that there is such talent.

I don’t like talking about myself because I feel far too egotistic when I do, but I’m going to use myself as an example. A reader of mine was curious one day and asked me what age I was. I told them and they didn’t believe me. The situation was actually quite humorous in the sense that I had no reason to lie. There was also a part of me that felt proud. But, there is also another possible outcome for telling people your young age...

Another reader was curious. When I told them the same thing, they decided to make fun of me, calling me immature. They told me that I most-likely had a professional editor to fix my “dumb” mistakes.

I don’t have an editor.

Even as I write this, I am not editing. There is a possibility I will edit when I am finished, but most likely not.

And then there is a situation on how adults view teenagers. There was a competition on a website called Movellas for writing an article about teenage writing stereotypes. I didn’t win, but there was a lot of information being shared.

I feel that teenagers need chances. They need the same opportunities as adults do. There are some sites that I cannot name of the top of my head that offer publishing deals, but they are only for 18 and older. This may be because of legal items, but if not, I think there should be far more sites acknowledging teenage talent.

A few teenage writers I can name off the top of my head are Abbigail Gibbs (she scored a book deal at 18, for publishing on a writing website called wattpad), Sarena and Sasha Nanua (they decided to self-publish using iUniverse), Jen Gray (who’s mentor is newly published author, Lindsay Cummings.)

My point is, if you look, you can find so many. And this is just something I noticed, but most teen authors “lurk” in writing websites such as Figment.com, wattpad, Movellas, Writer’s Cafe and Quizilla.

But there is also the other side of things. I can guarantee you that if you go to any of the sites listed, there will be a number of stories that are poorly written with bad clichés, irritating characters and simple grammar or spelling mistakes. The idea of talent can work both ways. Not everyone is talent and the age is irrelevant.

Perhaps that’s the reason teen writers have a bad name? The writing of the “not-so-talented” could reflect on the talent. That could be why all teens are branded as lazy and immature. I have only the conclusions drawn from a limited amount of information I was able to dig from research.

Is there anyone out there who has never heard of a maturely written novel by a teen? That may be the case, but I encourage all of you to look an spread the word. I am very passionate about the specific age group and I really do hope that the people reading this will be interested in conducting some of their own research.

Now, I’m going to conclude and loosen up a bit. It’s definitely weird writing like my parents but I thought it would be fitting, considering that I’m writing for a blog that has over 1000 GFC followers.

If you guys are interested –which you have full right to not be, I would just like to leave a list of links where you can get to know me better.

Blog: Musings of a Blogder 
Twitter: @NovaBlogder
Facebook Page: www.facebook.com/musingsofablogder
Goodreads Name: Nova Lee Zaiden/ NovaXWN (Username)

That should be enough promo, but I do really want to thank Mickey. She got me blogging in the first place because I was inspired by her and many other blogs. Writing here and knowing that some people are reading this makes me smile so much.

- Nova