I'm confused.
This is about to be one of those posts where I'm not sure what I need to say, so I ramble until we figure it out together.
Sort of like the exact opposite of a good essay. Or a good novel.
Some of y'all know I'm trying to write a young adult fantasy novel. One of my editors, Chersti, reminded me that the best continuing education I can do is read current YA fantasy novels: see what's out there, what young adults are enjoying, how the characters and stories feel.
In the spring of 2021, I read An Ember in the Ashes and The Wicked Prince. I didn't particularly enjoy either (though I liked Wicked Prince more), for several reasons:
1) I read them quickly, mostly "to have read them," rather than to enjoy them. (I've recently learned that that's a very ENFJ thing to do.)
2) I was haunted by the fear that they'd somehow invalidate the Fire Faery Story, that they'd be too similar, or much better.
3) They were written in present tense, which I hate.
4) The characters and stories felt thin and pale.
5) I felt like I was too close to the book-writing process to enjoy them as literature, like a freshly graduated magician watching someone do tricks at a kid's birthday party. I saw all the fishing line hanging from the authors' props, all the ways they'd choreographed situations to tell the reader what the characters looked like, how old they were, what different world-building terms meant, what the characters' "story goals" were. Everything felt clumsy and contrived.
This weekend, I started reading The Stardust Thief. It is blessedly past tense, but that's my favorite thing about it so far. I'm still nearly paralyzed by the fear that something about this book will hurt the process of my own novel. I still see fishing line everywhere.
And what's worse is that the author is doing tons of things that I did or wanted to do in the Fire Faery Story, but was told "you can't do that" (e.g., italicized flashbacks in the middle of a chapter). It makes me angry and indignant. If this author can break "the rules," why can't I? Why was I hamstrung into writing something that felt forced and soulless when CLEARLY doing what I wanted to do would not have been the authorial suicide I was led to believe? I may be flattering myself, but I do not think Abdullah is doing it significantly "better" than I was.
As far as I can tell, reading current YA isn't working for me. I hate it. I hate the process, I hate the stories, I hate the characters, I hate the conflicts. (At least part of this isn't YA's fault; my current state of mind is partly to blame.) I hate that current YA feels different from the YA I knew and loved as a kid. What's changed? Is it really me, or are "kids these days" wanting something different than what I grew up reading?
I decided that maybe it would be better to reread some YA that I loved as a teenager. I Googled "YA fantasy books 2007–2014" and started skimming some titles. I remembered a lot of them. And you know what feeling welled up in me as I read probably 80% the titles I recognized?
Disdain.
WHAT?!
YA fantasy was my drug of CHOICE back in the day. YA fantasy is THE ONLY type of story I have ever wanted to write, or ever tried to write.
And yet, if memory is serving me as I scroll through titles, I disliked the majority of YA fantasy even as a young adult myself (looking at you, Wicked Lovely, Divergent, Maximum Ride, Dark Angel, Across the Universe, etc.)
I tried to think of the YA fantasy books that I remember loving: Inkheart, the Mortal Instruments trilogy, the Twilight saga (yes, I would be happy to have a conversation about that with you, thanks for asking), the Hunger Games trilogy, the Inheritance cycle (ONLY the first two) the Uglies series, the Farsala trilogy.
But like...that's it. Those are IT. Those are the sum total of the YA fantasy books that evoke good feelings off the top of my head.
That...is not a lot of books. That doesn't feel like a wide enough sample for me to have branded myself as a lover of YA fantasy for MY ENTIRE LIFE.
What does this mean?!
I just glanced over at my bookshelves and saw non-YA fantasy titles that I loved as a teenager: Homeless Bird, Angel on the Square, Homecoming, The Thief Lord, From the Mixed Up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler, On to Oregon. Very few of those conform to the "rules" I'm told I need to follow if I'm going to be successful as a YA writer. In fact, by today's standards, many of those probably wouldn't fit into the YA genre at all.
So I'm left with lots of overwhelming questions, in no particular order:
1) Did I actually love "YA fantasy" as a kid, or did I just like well-written books?
2) Are kids these days THAT fundamentally different from kids who were fourteen in 2008?
3) If I follow my gut/heart and write the way I want, will my story actually flop, or will it just appeal to a narrower slice of the demographic (which might be the same thing to publishers)?
I'm so confused. I'm confused about what made me like certain books as a teen, and what to do with all these modern rules and standards and exceptions that make a YA fantasy book marketable. If Chelsea Abdullah can splice loosely-related italicized flashbacks into the middle of chapters in The Stardust Thief (published 2022), why the hell can't I? And if Angel on the Square (published 2001) had a time skip of four years, can I really not have a one-year time skip in my book?
I know writing books is both an art and a science, but I'm having trouble knowing when to break the rules and when to keep them. When is it wise to be the artist, and when is it wise to the the scientist?
I also know that this is probably what all first-time aspiring authors go through. I know this is what good editors will help me navigate. I know life is full of calculated risks. I know there's no way to know what will work until I just do it.
But it's really frustrating and confusing. I can do hard things, but this isn't just a hard thing, it's a...I don't even know what it is. I think that's what makes it so hard. It's not like trying to do a maze in the dark, it's like walking around in the dark not knowing if it's a maze, or someone's house, or the middle of a forest, or a different planet, or if everyone else has night vision, or if you're actually dead or—
It's just a lot.
~Stephanie
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