Friday, September 17, 2010

The idea behind the story

When Steve Vosloo from the Shuttleworth Foundation approached me about writing a cellphone story for young adults, I looked to my daughters for an idea. They are always up to something. These “somethings” are usually things that make me bleed from my ears with fear for their safety.

When I moan at them and yell, “Come on, just don’t do that, you’re under age - and it’s stupid,” they have two retorts for me.

The first is, “But you do it, and you’re old. Don’t you know how stupid and uncool you look?”

The other retort comes after we have calmed down and are talking more quietly - usually when I’m driving the car and we can’t make eye contact. They say, “Hey Mom, you just don’t understand the pressure we are under to fit in. It’s so hard to say no.”

So that’s where the concept for Confessions of a Virgin Loser came from. The idea that two friends could callously challenge their dorky buddy to do stupid things under threat of being dumped. It’s an idea taken to an extreme, but I think it’s happening on all sorts of levels every day.

Here are my wickedly clever daughters. They are always up to something.

Teen1 - She does things that make blood pour from my ears.


Teen2 - She thinks I'm uncool.



1 comment:

  1. haha. I'm sure it is the responsibility of a teen to think their parent is uncool.

    ReplyDelete