The Outsiders is sometimes credited with creating and popularizing Young Adult fiction (YA) as a genre. Did you set out to write something new and different when you were writing? What was your mindset?
I guess in a way I did set out to write something new and different with The Outsiders, because I wanted to read something that dealt with teen life as I saw it. There wasn’t anything realistic for teenagers to read back then; I was through with the horse books, not ready for a lot of adult books, couldn’t stand the “Mary Sue Goes To the Prom” books, so one of the main reasons why I wrote it was to read it. Also, I loved to write, and had been writing since grade school, and I was angry about the social divisions in my very larger high school (Will Rogers High).
Something I never knew about “The Outsiders” until we met is that even though you wrote it when you were only 16, it was actually your third novel. What did you learn about writing when you wrote those first two novels? What happened to them?
Like everyone else, I learned from my mistakes. I think every book is practice for the next one. At that time I still needed a lot of practice so I wisely never tried to publish them.
A new paperback edition of S.E. Hinton’s latest collection of stories (for adults), Some of Tim’s Stories, came out last month.–Heidi
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