Young Adult

Let me start by saying this: I'm glad high school is over. I was fairly lucky - I got good grades, I was able to play sports, and I had a fair amount of friends, but I still had a handful of people who made it their life's mission to make my life a living hell. As I went to boarding school, they had plenty of time to plan their attacks.

I've moved past that time in my life, but something about that time in my life has continued to draw me in. The feeling like no one else understands you, that no one has ever experienced what you're going through, the first blush of new love... I still get swept up in those stories. I'm drawn to movies about teenagers and recently the latest round of teen tv shows have sucked me in.

I always figured it was just me refusing to grow up, but as I've learned more about writing and written more myself, I'm beginning to think there's something more. The novel I started for NaNoWriMo has three points of view: two adults and one teenager, Becca. The story revolves around something that happens to Becca and addresses how it affects all of them, but while I was writing I found myself wanting to focus on her, to keep telling the story from her point of view.

I'm not so dense that I didn't question whether the story should only be told from Becca's perspective, but at the time I decided to keep going as I wrote it. I still wasn't sure how a few plot points would work out and figured it would be resolved through Becca's father's POV. I set the story aside at the end of November and returned to my current MS, but the nano novel has stayed in the back of my mind.

Enter the Twilight series. I really enjoyed the books and caught myself noticing similarities to how Bella and Edward's relationship plays out and how mine does. (I swear Becca's name wasn't based on Bella's...) Not the plot, just little interactions between the characters, things they do, that sort of thing. That was the first time I realized that maybe I was on to something here.

I've mentioned my curiosity about writing young adult (YA) to a couple friends, and they've said they think my voice lends itself to YA. Of course that made me question my level of maturity, but who am I kidding? I always say I don't feel like an adult, so who better to write for teens?

Then I read this post by agent Kristin Nelson. She talks about how she feels she stumbled into representing YA and how her husband wasn't at all surprised by the decision. It's given me a fresh perspective on the thoughts bouncing around in my head. I know my current wip is not YA, even though the MC is 19 years old, but I don't think I want to settle on one genre, not yet.

What about you? How have you found your genres?