benjiwheeler / adaandleonovel Goto Github PK

Hi, and thanks for taking a look at my novel in progress!

"Ada and Leo" is a YA novel about 5th graders building creative things with technology, running afoul of the bean counters ruining education, and fighting back!

The curent draft is far from complete -- it's not even a first draft. It consists of short episodes I wrote in 12 minute stints (though Kathy Garlick's wonderful Round Robin program, highly recommended!), roughly ordered according to chronological time in the timeline.

The file adaleo.txt is a raw text file, with no visual formatting. After clicking on it, you may notice that the paragraphs do not wrap -- each is just a single, long horizontal line of text. If you click the "Raw" button in the top-right of the screen, it will display with line wrapping; you can then adjust the width of your browser window to get more natural line breaks. Or, copy and paste the whole thing into a Google doc or other word processing app.

One note: the lead characters Ada and Leo are, respectively, a 10 year old Black American girl, and a 10 year old White American boy. I am a White American man. I know that many White writers who write Black characters do injustice to them. If you're wondering why Ada is Black, I have several thoughts, but at the end of the day I can't say it's right, or wrong, for me to write this character. I'm interested to know others' thoughts.

A few of my own thoughts on this:

• I never conciously decided to "make" Ada Black (and neither did I conciously decide to "make" Leo White); the moment it occurred to me that there could be a story about young people named "Ada" and "Leo" doing creative things with technology, I knew who they both were.
• I have considered changing Ada's race, to avoid uneasiness on the part of readers and publishers, and this strikes me as wrong. It would feel, to me, like whitewashing Ada, like erasing her.
• I care a lot about Ada's relationship with each of her parents, and it matters to me to portray a Black American family which, while having its own specific struggles (related to Ada's mom's philosophies about technology), is fundamentally not characterized by the pathologies that plague so many Black American characters in popular media.

Again, none of this is to claim that I'm the right person to tell Ada's story, or that I have the proper insights into what it is like for her, and her parents, to be Black in America. I do, however, think there can be value even in the flaws with which I am, surely, telling her story. Sometimes, mistakes and surfaced assumptions in a work of art are the most valuable things about it. It's with that spirit -- and, I think, an authentic love for this character -- that I'm continuing to write her.

• read some of what I've written so far
• forgive me for how scattered and disconnected it is -- I have been writing whatever scenes imagination strikes me with, not starting at the beginning!
• tell me what you love
• ask a question about something that confused you
• tell me EVERYWHERE that you were bored
• please don't feel the need to exonerate me from my hand-wringing about writing Black characters -- that's part of the process, and I don't intend to stop second-guessing myself :)

I can be reached at [email protected]

Thank you!