Recently I had the misfortune of seeing the movie Young Adult. It offers some interesting story elements, with very good acting and direction, and it does a great job of realistically depicting a writer’s job (something most movies about writers fail at miserably, despite presumably having been written by writers) but the storyline is appalling, and I can’t recommend the movie at all. The end of the movie actually had me shouting at the television with indignation and disgust … although really, I was shouting at the screenwriter, Diablo Cody.

Ms. Cody wrote one of my favorite movies of all time, Juno, so I don’t mean to suggest that she writes only bad movies. I got some insight into where she was coming from when I read this excerpt from a Huffington Post article about the movie:

“I feel like Facebook is, in a lot of ways, proof that people don’t change,” Cody said. “The fact that we can keep up with the people that we used to know and watch them progress or not progress — which is the case most of the time — it’s interesting and it’s a little sad.”

So in that framework, the movie makes sense. If you believe people don’t change, you might then write a movie about a person who is a mess and doesn’t change. However, writing a movie like that doesn’t make it a workable story–nor does it make it true.

People who think people don’t change need to spend time with more and different people.  Have you ever met a recovered alcoholic? Ever met someone who went back to school later in life and started a new career? Someone who lost a bunch of weight and got the fitness bug? I certainly do.

Facebook certainly isn’t proof that people don’t change: in fact, the primary reason I seek people out on Facebook is to find out how they have changed. What are their relationships like now? What kind of work do they do? What’s important to them? Where do they live? How are they spending their time? Are they happy? What happened later in the story of that person I used to know and have lost touch with?

It’s true, though, that we’re built to resist change. Our habitual behaviors are expressed in our brains as neural connections that strengthen over time, and it takes concerted effort or a stark change of circumstances to build new connections. However, this is worlds away from saying we don’t change. With the right influence or effort, virtually anything about us can change. Unskilled people can become masterful (see “Do You Have Enough Talent to Become Great at It?“); unhealthy people can become healthy (“Finding Exercise You Love: The Taekwondo Example“); and unhappy people can get used to having joy in their lives (see “The Best 40 Percent of Happiness“), for example.

The thing that most upsets me about the idea that people don’t change is that it tends to be a self-fulfilling prophecy. In a meta-study about willpower done a few years back, a key finding was that individuals who were trying to change their habits generally didn’t succeed unless they believed they could. This makes sense: how much effort will we realistically invest in something that we feel won’t pan out?

Trying to convince people wholesale that change isn’t possible hacks away at the foundation of confidence we need to be able to change, and that foundation is essential even when we fail at first. For example, consider that a smoker who has unsuccessfully tried to quit before has a better chance of quitting now, statistically, than a smoker who has never tried to quit before. In some cases, the mistaken belief that the smoker could quit on the first or second attempt allowed that person to get far enough along to successfully quit on a later attempt.

People accomplish real change every day, but it’s far more likely that change will happen when we understand and believe it’s possible in the first place.

My young adult novel Family Skulls, about a 16-year-old trying to break a generations-long curse on his rural Vermont family, will be free on Amazon for Kindle at http://www.amazon.com/Family-Skulls-ebook/dp/B00573Y36W until Monday 12/26.

One of the things I enjoyed most about writing this book was conjuring up elements of my Vermont childhood on the page. The story’s hero, 16-year-old Seth Quitman, is much more self-possessed and practical than I was as a teen, but the dirt and gravel roads he bikes down, the house he lives in, and much else are very familiar to me.

I also was very fortunate to get the chance for a cover by artist Dixon Leavitt, who managed to bring all of the key elements of the story (like the warmth and occasional claustrophobia of a close-knit family, menace, mystery, and the vastness and brilliance of a starry sky on a dark night) into his piece. I’ll be posting about the development of that cover in the near future.

Harry Potter, The Hunger Games, Twilight, even A Wrinkle In Time … technically, these books were never meant for those of us over the age of 18 or so. As Young Adult (or in the case of Harry Potter, Middle Grade) fiction, they were intended for the younger generation, and yet adults–by which I mean possibly you and definitely me–are still reading them by the bookmobileful. I think we’re supposed to be reading more serious stuff–maybe The Grapes of Wrath, or Moby Dick … War and Peace is probably good. I always tell people I’m reading War and Peace, and I’m at that part right near the end. This helps make sure they’ll change the subject quickly so that I don’t have to prove I don’t know what it’s about. Except, you know, obviously war, and also peace. Probably there’s something there about Russia invading … I don’t know, somebody. Maybe Russia invading Russia. Russia is pretty big: they could probably get away with that.

Anyway, my point is that it’s not always impressive and mature-sounding to say “Oh, I just read this great book written for 12-year-olds …” Here, as a public service, are some excuses writers and readers can use to cover for an addiction to young adult fiction.

• I have a teen at home, so I have to know what they’re reading to be a good parent.
• I work with teens, so I have to know what they’re reading to do my job.
• I know my kid is only four, but I have to be up to speed by the time she hits middle school.
• While I don’t have or work with kids now, I might someday, and it’s better to be safe than sorry.
• I mistook it for the latest long, boring novel about the grim reflections of an emotionally deprived settlement camp volunteer. That’s what I really meant to read.
• I’m a writer, and that market’s hot right now.
• I’m a writer, and I just want to make sure that I know what’s Young Adult so that I don’t write some by mistake.
• Actually, I’m pretty sure Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban is classified as a technothriller.
• What, that? That’s not mine.
• Well you know, it’s interesting: it turns out that there are moral and ethical threads to the subtext that really delineate an entirely separate and more cerebral story not immediately evident if you don’t really dig in, but that with energetic literary analysis really emerges with a characteristic–wait, come back! Don’t you want to hear about the affective parallelism?
• Young adult fiction is where all the really steamy stuff is these days. Who wants to read about two old people doing it?
• Oh, I just have that because I’m translating it into Serbo-Croatian.
• That’s just one of the fake covers I use to hide my D.H. Lawrence books.
• That’s from when I was a kid. I only read eBooks now.
• Yes, I’m reading young adult fiction. When’s the last time you read a book you couldn’t put down?

My young adult novel Family Skulls is now available for the Kindle, temporarily priced at 99 cents. Here’s the brief description. If you’d like a free review copy (electronic only), drop me a line!

No one will help 16-year-old Seth Quitman–ever, with anything. Seth’s family live in a small Vermont town under a curse that has hounded them for generations, one that makes anything they may need–from a bus ride to a recommendation letter to an ambulance–forever out of their reach.

Until now, Seth’s family has done the best they could under the curse, knowing that the hill sorcerer family that cursed them could do much, much worse. But now things have gone farther than Seth can stand, and he plans to face down the curse-keeper and free his family–or die trying.