Your new book "Delete this entry?" written in the form of a blog of a 14-year-old girl Vera. Why do you think at this age many teenagers have a need to keep a blog or diary?
I know for sure that absolutely any teenager sooner or later in one format or another, in paper or electronic form, but keeps a diary. There is practically no growing up without a diary. I absolutely know this, because my son and my eldest niece do it too, and some of them already have a video blog. The format may change, but the essence remains. Our life circumstances may change, historical, social, economic realities may change, but some teenage issues still do not change. Because there are things that at 13-14 people must decide for themselves. Starting with stupid questions like “what will I be when I grow up?” to quite practical ones: “how can I earn my first money?”, “how to survive such a situation at school or at home?”, “how to make peace, not quarrel?” , "how to stand up for yourself?". Sometimes, in order to make a decision, you need to write about it, speak out in front of the camera or type text on the keyboard, or write by hand. I think this is important.
In principle, this story is a monologue of a 14-year-old girl. Then she will be fifteen, then sixteen, but we will not know this, - inside the diary she will always be fourteen. And as long as we have these diaries somewhere, we can return to them and either read a piece again, or remember ourselves, this is also very important. If I didn’t have diaries at school, I wouldn’t be able to write like that in my adult life.
Is it important for a writer to get feedback from readers? How do reviews of your books influence you?
I really love the reviews on the website of the Books competition, which I won last year with the book “Delete this entry?”. All authors look forward to these reader reviews. In fact, it is always a great happiness. But it's always a little scary. And it is always very interesting, because prepared readers express some reasoned detailed opinion - this is really a worthy level of commentary. If I see a review on a social network from the series “I looked at the cover, I realized how terrible, terrible it is, it’s disgusting to take it in my hands, I won’t buy it in my life,” I’ll probably get upset. And if I see a review: “oh, this book is about me, I read it in one gulp,” I will be delighted, but it will be a text that is not very informative for me.
It seems to me that it is not easy for an adult to think and write like a teenager. In my opinion, you managed to convey the inner world of a 14-year-old girl very accurately. Did you use any special techniques to "get used to the image" of your heroine? Did you draw on your own experience?
- I am a mother of a teenager, - however, I have a boy, he is 14. I have older nieces, they are 15 and 16, and there is also a younger nephew. In general, there are a lot of teenagers around me, so I naturally know some things about them simply from the “environment”. And she experienced some things herself, both at a fairly young age and at a more serious one. This text contains several quotes from a diary I kept when I was fourteen.
- Do you “check” in some way whether you managed to write about a teenager reliably? For example, do you show your new book to some test group of readers before it is published?
I have two nieces and they both read "Delete this entry?". One niece read it, and she liked it, we discussed it a little with her. And the other read a little later - she did not like it. She is 16 years old and she told me: “If I wanted to go and read someone else’s blog, I would go and read someone else’s blog, why are you giving me this?” And I was grateful to her for her absolute sincerity. I thought: “If the text is indistinguishable from a live blog, then, thank God, we succeeded.”
Everything is more difficult for me with my son, because he does not like it when I write about girls, he thinks that this is not interesting. And when I write about boys, he says to me: “Mom, I'm tired of being your prototype, I'm already tired of it! Mom, don't write about boys." Therefore, my next book will be about dried gophers. I'm absolutely serious.
In the book "Delete this entry?" the heroine has a dog named Marsik, whom Vera loves very much, but she never describes him in her blog. There are no illustrations in the book, and even the cover shows only the silhouette of a dog. But in the text there is an indication of a very strange rare breed "Rizenboks". What is this amazing breed, and why did Vera have to have such a dog?
Dogs of such breeds are formed when one dog is a Giant Schnauzer and the other is a Boxer, and what they have as a result is a Giant Box. The fact is that this dog named Mars is a character with deep literary roots. There is a prose writer Timur Maksyutov in St. Petersburg. And about five years ago, as an editor, I worked with the first collection of his stories, and there he had a story about his own boxer dog, including how she once had puppies of the Giantbox breed. And I liked these puppies so much that already in the process of creating my book I realized that Vera's dog must be a very unusual breed that no one else can have. And I, accordingly, quickly issued one of the puppies of Timur Maksyutov's dog to my heroine. Then, already when the book was coming out, I asked him: “Timur, do you mind?” He replied, "I'm proud." So we have a dog with such a deep genealogy.
Actually, the dog is depicted on the cover of this book for a reason, the dog here is one of the leading characters in the text. Because our animals are always characters, sometimes they are the main characters, and sometimes they are just very important. And here, with the help of this dog, they solve various problems in life, including the problems of growing up and problems in the relationship between mother and daughter.
- Do you think books can teach us to grow up, should they warn us against some mistakes?
Books have no right to teach anyone anything. The book is like a buffet. Everyone takes what he needs from there.
After the publication of this book, I once spoke to schoolchildren. Then two girls came up to me, and one of them said: “I read your book, there was a dog. I called my mother and said: “Mom, let’s not get a dog for now, I’m not ready for this.” And here I realized that I won, because there are some things that you like or don’t want, but you pass on completely by accident. That is, a person has made some decision, quite important for himself, has become older.
It happens that readers interpret books in their own way, emphasizing something that the author had only a background. What do you think, should what the author put into the book necessarily coincide with what the reader saw in it?
Sometimes it turns out that the reader sees in the text not at all what the author wanted. The reader sees there something that has never been there at all. This is such a search for a black cat in a black room: they do not understand what is in this room - a rhinoceros, or a crocodile, or a cat.
When the book had just come out, I went to Petrozavodsk together with the writer Shamil Idiatullin as part of the “Kniguru” competition. We encouraged the children to read there in every possible way. And on the last day we are brought to the male cadet corps. The brutal Shamil Idiatullin, a journalist from the Kommersant publishing house, the author of quite adult texts and the author of texts for teenagers, quite calmly found a common language with these boys. And I think: “Lord, how can I…” And then Shamil says: “Guys, this book is about a girl and about how girls have brains. Read it and you'll understand how to deal with them." And I think: “She, it turns out, is also about this ...” I don’t know if any of those boys have read it, but now I know what else my book is about. This is always very valuable to know. So, after meeting with readers, it suddenly becomes clear what else this text is about.
In conversations with my friends or in literature classes, we sometimes discuss the question of why to read books. And as a writer, I want to ask you: what do you think, why write books? What gives you (and perhaps also what takes you away) writing?
- Writing a text is like taking out a deep splinter. They write for the meaning of life. So that everything that we have experienced does not go into space, but remains here like a cloud. So that we can comfort the next generation: don't be afraid, guys, all the horror that happens to you is the norm.
Interviewed by Maria Dorofeeva
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Maria Dorofeeva, holder of the diploma "Book expert of the XXI century", member of the children's editorial board of "Papmambuka", 16 years old, Simferopol
Books by Larisa Romanovskaya
We continue to acquaint you with the works included in the short list of the Kniguru-2016 award.
Today we read for you a novel written specifically for teenage girls (as well as their parents), "Delete this entry?" Larisa Romanovskaya.
This story is written in the format of a blog-diary, which is maintained by 14-year-old Vera throughout the school year. In it, she describes the events that take place in her life, shares her experiences, reflects on life. The coverage of topics touched upon in the story is amazing: friendship, first love, problems in the family, GIA, etc.
Larisa Romanovskaya
“I grew up as a prosperous, nervous, fat and very happy child. At the age of four, my mother taught me to read and write, and since then I have been doing just that. Poppins: Twenty years later, I learned that writing such stories is not at all embarrassing and this is called ficwriting, and the stories themselves are fanfiction.
Since 1993, she regularly published poems in Pionerskaya Pravda, then she began to cooperate with the Moscow media as a journalist, and in 2002 she graduated from the Gorky Literary Institute (specialty - "poetry").
In 2011, her science fiction novel "Moscow Watchmen" was shortlisted for the Manuscript of the Year literary award.
"Delete this entry?"
For whom
For children from 13 years old
Topics
Friendship, teachers, GIA, relationships with parents, broken family, internet, first love, death of a pet, domestic violence, suicide.
Plot
Throughout the school year, 14-year-old Vera keeps a personal blog-diary, where she enters the events of her life, her experiences and thoughts.
The diary is really very personal and very "girlish", in it Vera writes about her former first school love (ironically asking herself "How could I fall in love with him ?!"), and about her friend 
Lilya and her difficult relationship with her father, about the unloved English teacher and about the pressure called "GIA" and about much, much more.
Sometimes, from her own thoughts, she becomes ashamed or embarrassed in front of herself, and she tries to delete this or that entry in the diary. Every time the decision is different: whether it is necessary to keep it for yourself (as a reminder, memory) or not.
What did you like
1. Despite the fact that very difficult topics are touched upon in the story, there is no excessive fixation on them, this 
doesn't look like a "bitch". On the contrary, after reading, a very bright feeling remains.
2. The main character thinks and acts according to her age.
What did not like
It is not entirely clear what blog with the ultrasound photo and where Vera's mother could publish on the Internet 15 years ago, and her daughter then find it.
Grade
- Tags:
- Books for children and parents
- teenager
L. Romanovskaya. Delete this entry?
Publisher: Samokat
Target audience: teenagers over 12 years old
Vera is fourteen and hates school, the English teacher, and being reminded about GIA. Vera keeps a blog about what she would like to remember and what she dreams of forgetting. Everything that happened once remains not only in memory, but also in the records. What's going on with Lily's best friend? And why, at the most difficult moment, does mother turn for help to that person whom Vera cannot stand? All this together - a year of life, a year when the ninth grade ended.
The book was published in the Oncoming Traffic series for teenagers.
Larisa Romanovskaya graduated from the Literary Institute. Gorky, but worked in ten completely different specialties. Like the main character of the story, she hated English at school and was sure that she would never learn it in her life (but she did learn it).
Larisa is the author of the science fiction cycle of novels The Moscow Watchdogs (shortlisted for the Manuscript of the Year award), as well as the story for children The Youngest (shortlisted for the Kniguru award). For the heartfelt and sincere story "Delete this entry" she received third place in the literary competition "Kniguru" in 2016.
The new story by Larisa Romanovskaya "Delete this entry" is aimed at teenage girls from 12-13 years old. This is the author's third children's story. Prior to that, she published two children's stories "The Youngest" and "Vitka-Vintik" and a cycle of novels in the genre of "female fantasy" "Moscow Watchmen". In addition to fiction, Larisa Romanovskaya writes articles for magazines and poetry. In 2016, the story "Delete this entry" took third place in the All-Russian competition for the best literary work for children and youth "Kniguru".
The main character of the story, fourteen-year-old Vera, writes a blog on the Internet, in which she describes everything that excites and worries her. The whole story of Larisa Romanovskaya is written in the form of Vera's Internet blog. The reader gets acquainted with the contents of the blog, finds out the thoughts, desires, plans of the girl, solves her problems together with her, plunges into her inner world. A teenage girl has a lot of problems. One day, Vera decided to take part in the 100 Days of Happiness flash mob and thought: “Is there a lot of happiness in her life?”. She has problems with her boyfriend, she hates her English teacher, and she lies all the time: she invents some unrealistic stories about herself, and why she herself does not understand. For a whole year we will follow Vera's blog, witnessing her victories and defeats, successes and failures. The ninth grade will be an important transitional period for Vera's life. A completely different girl will move into the tenth grade. Before our eyes will pass her growing up, changing desires and priorities, outlook on life. Everything will change: her long-standing friendship with her best friend Lilka will collapse, mutual understanding will arise with her mother, Vera, she will suddenly fall in love with English and her “hated” teacher VM (Vera Mironovna). From a capricious teenage girl, a self-confident young girl will grow up. This difficult overcoming of adolescence is the main content of the story of Larisa Romanovskaya. The story is written sincerely and this is another plus for her.
To be honest, it was difficult for me to read the story of Larisa Romanovskaya. I'm not used to reading internet blogs. I kept tripping over hackneyed phrases, strange abbreviations, Internet jargon, emoticons, etc. But then I read it, the sincerity of the writer, her bold attempts to understand the complex and contradictory soul of a teenager still fascinated me. I think that for young readers, for whom Internet culture has long become a part of their lives, the story in the form of an Internet chat or blog will be of interest, reading it will not be difficult for them. Still, a new generation grew up on the Internet. This has its pros and cons, but it is an integral part of the life of modern children. Blogging thinking, Internet chats are all elements of modern existence that are very important in the lives of children, it is no longer possible to simply brush them aside. Many of the teenagers lead an active life on the Internet, create personal text and video blogs, for them it has become a necessity. If their grandparents kept personal diaries, today's teenagers keep Internet blogs instead of diaries. We often wonder why for the sake of an unusual selfie and likes on the Internet, children do crazy things, why is the anonymous attention of the Internet audience so important to them? There can only be one answer to this. Virtual reality, the reality of the Internet for modern children is no less important and real than the world around us. You can argue about this, you can condemn it, you can resent it, but this is part of the life of our children and we need to come to terms with it.
The story of Larisa Romanovskaya "Delete this entry" was published in the edition "Scooter" in the series "Oncoming traffic". The book is in a hard colorful cover, printed on high-quality white paper, offset printing. There are no illustrations in the book. Graffiti on the cover of Ksenia Turenko.
