New young writers popular, but still have homework to do
New young writers popular, but still have homework to do
Eva C. Komandjaja, The Jakarta Post, Jakarta
The rising numbers of young writers smitten by teen lit fever
is encouraging say education experts and literary critics, but
these writers need to further develop their talents in order to
become mature writers.
Arief Rahman, an education expert, told The Jakarta Post that
he thought it excellent that teenagers nowadays were able to
write books and publish and sell them in bookstores.
"It means their works have been accepted by the public and
they are receiving recognition as writers at a young age," Arief
said.
He added that these young writers needed tutoring so that they
would be able to further develop their talent and increase the
quality of their writings.
"A good book should be written using good language, have a
moral message to deliver, good logical thinking and an original
story idea. If a young writer can meet these four criteria, he or
she could become a good writer," Arief said.
According to Arief, school is the best place for youngsters to
develop their writing skills. Schools should offer writing
classes so that Indonesia can produce more young writers.
Maneke Budiman, a literary critic from the University of
Indonesia, said that the current teen lit phenomenon in Indonesia
proved that many youngsters are quite talented writers. This is
despite the common perception that Indonesians did not have
particularly good reading habits.
However, Maneke said that most teen lit writers ignored
grammatical rules and thus made their books difficult to read for
many people, particularly those unfamiliar with teen worlds.
"The sentences are sometimes illogical. They also use slang
only understood by Jakartan youngsters," he told The Post.
Maneke pointed out that in most writing competitions, the use
of good Indonesian was always the first priority when scoring.
"We hope that youngsters will be willing learn to use good
Indonesian so that they could better develop their ideas and
finally end up as mature writers who can write anything and not
just teen lit topics," Maneke said.
Maneke added that current teen lit writers would grow older
and start writing on non-teen issues. Yet, the teen lit
phenomenon would continue as new writers would come to replace
them.
He did not think that teen lit novels were boring despite the
fact that they mostly referred to teen issues, such as dating and
friendships.
"There are many teen lit novels that are a little bit
different right now. They talk about teen issues from, for
instance, a religious point of view. The topics are still the
same, about love and relationships, but they write about them
from different perspectives," Maneke said.