The truth is out there
Novelist and script editor Lucy V Hay tells Amy Sparkes how she writes YA fiction that busts lazy stereotypes about real-life issues
Why did you decide to be a writer?
I don’t think I really ever decided to be a writer. It’s a bit of cliché, but I’ve always written, since I was a child. I wrote my first ‘book’ when I was about seven. It took up twelve pages of my maths book and was called Dustcart George. It had illustrations, too. I was in lots of trouble with the maths teacher, but the English teacher told me it was great. I don’t think it really was, but her encouragement meant everything to me. My story was about a girl who ran away from home. She ran a dustcart (as you do) and had a horse that pulled it called Reg. I had never even seen a horse-drawn dustcart in real life, so I have no idea why I thought this was a good job or even possible.
What was your road to publication?
Originally, I was a blogger (and I still am). I am a script reader and script editor, plus I run the site www.bang2write.com, which has been one of The Write Life’s Top 100 Sites For Writers for the past three years in a row. Bang2write was also instrumental in getting me an agent. However, one of my very first writing sales was in young adult fiction.
My first novel became Book 1 in The Intersection Series, Proof Positive. My agent at the time, Julian Friedmann, said I should write a novel about being a teenage mum. I was resistant to this idea for a while. I felt that teenage mums were over-represented, that people always assume the worst of them anyway … Then I realised the answer was obvious: I should write a true portrayal of what it’s like to be a pregnant teenager and young mum. After all, I know lots of women like me, yet I’d never seen the truth about our stories on screen or in print. All I’d ever seen was that awful stereotype of young girls as lazy, terrible parents. This is not my reality, nor any of the teen parents I have known, so where were our stories?