21 Under 21: Camryn Garrett Won’t Let Anyone Tell Teens They Can’t Write
Camryn Garrett is part of Teen Vogue’s 21 Under 21 class of 2018, which spotlights extraordinary young women, girls, and femmes making waves in their industries or passions of choice.
Camryn Garrett’s path to publishing her first book started in what may seem like an unexpected place. As a young teen, she was an active reader and writer of fan fiction, but she says a quote from Stephenie Meyer, author of the Twilight series, which inspired quite a bit of fanfic, changed her direction.
“I was reading actual published authors’ opinions on fan fiction,” Camryn tells Teen Vogue, “because some authors don't want fan fiction of their work. And Stephenie Meyer, who wrote Twilight, which I was obsessed with, she was like, ‘I don't mind it, but I don't understand why you would work on stuff based on my work and not work on your own work.’ And I was like, ‘Oh, yeah. I could do that.’"
And so she did. The NYU freshman’s first published novel, part of a two-book deal, is slated to hit bookstores in September 2019. So as Camryn heads to her first college classes — she’s majoring in film and TV — she’s also dealing with final edits on her first book, and starting edits on the second.
Camryn’s debut novel, which started as a NaNoWriMo project (in which writers try to write a 50,000-word novel in the month of November), focuses on a teen girl named Simone who has HIV. Camryn says she was inspired to write this story after a fascination with Angelina Jolie’s adoptions led her to blogs of parents who adopted HIV-positive children. Camryn saw a potential flaw in the logic of some of these bloggers, many of whom were Christian: “They're like, ‘The only thing that we have to worry about is when they have sex, and they're not gonna be having sex until marriage, so it's not a problem,’” she says. “And I was like, ‘That just does not sound realistic.’ And so, I was thinking, What if they're a teenager [with HIV] who never had a problem with this until they wanted to have sex?"
She advises other aspiring young writers to not let age or opinions on teen writing discourage them. “When you first start out, all your writing is gonna be bad,” Camryn says. “Yeah, when you first start anything, you're not gonna be amazing at it. I think to say that all teenage writing is gonna be bad is messed up, because if you're 30 and you've never written a book before, it's gonna suck, too.”
When asked about what she hopes for her life in 21 years, she has to take a moment to think — after all, she’s already achieved her life goal of becoming a published author.
“I hope by then I've made a feature film," Camryn answers. "I hope that I'm happy. I think those are two things that I'm good with.”
