There comes a point where you might look at your work and wonder how good or bad it is. You may wonder which mistakes you're making, be they grammatical or creative. Sometimes an editor or beta reader helps you catch those things, but what if it's what you intended? How much do our intentions, in the front of our mind of unconsciously, play into the final product? I'd imagine the answer is different for different writers, so I can only give you my view.

One of the things I do is make teenage characters sound too old, too mature. There are some kids who act older than their age, but by and large they don't. I have kids. They aren't like my characters, except perhaps in small flashes. In fact my theory of parenting is tiny bits of wonderful surrounded by a whole lot of WTF. SO why would I write characters that aren't the norm for that age group? Well, I'll tell you why.

Where do young people get a lot of information, both good and bad or just plan wrong? The internet. For all the good things, we have to accept the bad as well and the fact is you can put just about anything you like up there and some schlub will believe it. That is dangerous in a general sense, but even worse when you head toward the industry that leads the way forward in so many things - technology, online business and I'm referring to porn, of course. It's ready available, in fact you can search for something not associated with porn and still find a porn site. There are free cams that require no more than you saying that you're of age no matter how old you really are. Kids are clever, especially when it comes to satisfying those curiosities. Usually, they don't have the maturity to handle that. In my opinion, it's worse for gay kids. In a world where there are people who do all the things they do to gay people as a class, it's even worse when you're a kid. If you never wanted to tell your straight son that a VW bus full of cheerleaders wasn't going to roll into his driveway and have wild sex with him - but did because porn is all about fantasy, you did the right thing. I wish more people would talk to their kids about porn instead of just telling them no.

So, then, if people talk to their straight kids about porn in a meaningful way (I'm guessing a middling percent might), how much lower are the numbers for gay kids? Where will they learn about relationships and the role sexual intimacy plays? Porn? If they did choose to read my stuff, they might find a better way. To delve into the ideas that we care about our partners, that they feel good with us and give consent to be a part of whatever is happening. Will they relate to the more mature characters? Maybe, if it's laid out logically and they can see the path it took to get there.

I recall watching the Fosters on TV and someone saying to me 'They just go from the kids doing one stupid thing to another. Don't they ever learn?' I wonder how many kids it helped, and how many rolled their eyes and said 'How dumb can they be?' Hey, kids screw up. Some adults screw up more than a kid. Sometimes logic doesn't play a big role. I try to balance some of that, but in the end I want young people to take away the idea of respectful, meaningful relationships and not substitute sex for love.

So my younger character will probably continue to be more mature than they should be, for the most part. But it's for a good reason.