It's not a YA trend.

**Spoiler alert**

If you haven't read LOVE AND OTHER UNKNOWN VARIABLES, you may want to step away from this blog post. Please come back and read this when you're done.

Photo by Chris Green

A common question I get asked at author events is "How do you come up with your characters?"

The short answer is, "I don't. They come to me."

The long answer is this. 

I've had voices in my head my whole life. I never talked about them because no one else ever seemed to mention the voices in their heads, so I figured it was like using the bathroom—something we all do, but don't often start conversations with.

And in a way, I'm glad I didn't know the voices weren't normal. Knowing me, I'd have tried to stifle them for the sake of blending in. I was big into blending in back then. There's a lot to be said about anonymity in a small town that loves gossip.

But as I got older, I realized that the voices were not the norm. They made me strange no matter how I tried to hide. So I started listening to them—really listening. And then I started writing for them.

Characters are born from the voices in my head. They come with their own pre-programmed personalities and quirks. They come with problems that they want me to sort through with them. And while, yes, their problems are often subconscious reflections on my own life and struggles that I see everyday, my characters are not me. They are not copies of people around me. 

My characters are their own people—imaginary people, but let's not get too hung up on labels, shall we?

From the very first drafts of LOVE AND OTHER UNKNOWN VARIABLES (those first drafts were titled CHARLIE HANSON FINISHES LAST AND HOW THE UNIVERSE CHEATS), Charlotte Finch had cancer. It was just as much a part of her as her dark curls or the paint and charcoal smudges on her fingertips that she proudly showed to me. 

I didn't give cancer to her. She came to me that way. I'd never willfully give someone cancer—even imaginary someones.

In those first drafts, Charlotte was a very small character (let me refer you back to that whopping title that was all about Charlie). She was Ms. Finch's visiting sister. She came. She made funny remarks. She left. And when she left for good, it wasn't Charlie who was dealing with grief, but Ms. Finch. 

I pitched CHARLIE HANSON FINISHES LAST to an agent, who then read the whole manuscript, and passed on representing it. But she gave me valuable feedback, namely that the stakes weren't high enough for Charlie, and that Ms. Finch played too big a role in the story. 

I got the rejection email just before bed one night. Obviously, I cried myself to sleep. But when I woke the next morning, Charlotte was there and she nudged me to tell her story properly. And telling her story properly meant that Charlie Hanson was in for some heartbreak.

Which is a good thing, because Charlie starts out as the kind of guy who's heart will never be broken because he uses only his mind to evaluate the world. I didn't give him a mathematical mind—he came to me this way.

Charlotte (not her cancer—cancer is not a character in this story) helps Charlie grow as a person. Loving Charlotte will tear Charlie's whole life apart and force him to put it back together again—better than before. That is the story he needed to live. That is the story I helped him tell.

Since finishing the version of LOVE AND OTHER UNKNOWN VARIABLES that you all have read, I've been met with the Why cancer? question over and over.

The first time was at a query critique, when a brash literary agent, with an upstate New York accent that made me think of one of my brash, kick-ass aunts, read my query aloud and paused at one point to say, 

"Cancer? Does it have to be cancer?"(Are you guys hearing the accent? It makes this story sooo much better if you can hear it.)

She put a hand on her hip and eyed me. The whole room turned to look at me. I wanted to run, but I also wanted to answer.

"Yes." I admit this came out as a bit of a whisper.

"But there are so many cancer stories out there. Can't it just be something else?"

"No."

She huffed a bit and looked at me in a way that clearly read, Well, do it your way, honey, but it's your funeral.

See, I've been to enough funerals of people with cancer (one would have been enough, I assure you) to know that I was right, despite her obvious disapproval. 

Yes. Charlotte had cancer.

No. It couldn't have been something else, because, like I already said, Charlotte Finch had cancer. 

And when someone has cancer they can't just up and say, "But there are so many people with cancer out there. Can't it just be something else?" 

Cancer is cancer is cancer. And it's out there. And there are so many people living with it, fighting it, and dying from it—every day. 

Too many people. 

And while a person's sickness may become more than cancer (because cancer has deadly friends), it doesn't take the cancer out of the equation.

I've tried to not be offended by the Why cancer? question. I really have. But when I hear it, it feels I'm being told that if someone has cancer then her story is somehow less. It's already been told, so why bother? 

I even briefly felt that after hearing John Green read the first chapter of THE FAULT IN OUR STARS (whole story here). I thought, well if John Green has done it, then it doesn't need to be done again. Ever.

But in the end, I realized that THE FAULT IN OUR STARS is Hazel's story. 

LOVE AND OTHER UNKNOWN VARIABLES is Charlie's story. 

They are very different stories.

Two people can have ovarian cancer and yet have very different treatment plans. Why? Because they are different people. We blanket over the disease with a categorical name—cancer—but no two cancers are ever identical. 

Just as no two stories are. 

And while it's fair to say, I don't like reading stories about people with cancer, it isn't fair to just lump all these stories together into a "cancer story" category and ask, Cancer? Does it have to be cancer?

Or worse, Cancer? Why is that such a popular YA trend?

Because cancer is not a trend. It's a disease.

And none of the stories I've read are really about cancer. They are about the people living with it. And every life—even the imaginary ones—deserves a chance to tell it's story.

So when I hear Why Cancer? my heart breaks just a little bit more because there are so many beautiful reasons to read about a person who just so happens to have cancer. 

These aren't cancer stories. They are the stories of people's lives. Imaginary people, yes. But let's not get too hung up on labels, shall we?