There’s No ‘Just’ About Writing YA

I write young adult books. I’ve always written young adult books. But when I began the final year of my MFA, I felt like I needed to write something more – namely, an adult book. I felt like this was what I should be writing to be taken as a serious writer, yet acknowledging this also enraged me. YA writers are serious writers. Yet I was still caught up in this need to prove that I wasn’t just a YA writer.

Shortly after my first novel, a YA, was published back in 2015, someone asked if I was going to write an adult novel. I said probably not. They said they understood, as of course an adult novel would be a lot more work.

And that just enraged me. YA novels are hard work! They take just as much hard work. They’re not less complicated. They’re not ‘simple little children’s books’ (and quite frankly, I think Middle Grade and chapter books and picture books are very hard to write), and yet this stigma around YA hasn’t gone anywhere. It’s still so prevalent. Which doesn’t make sense, because he majority of YA buyers are adult readers. Why are we belittling books that adults like to read, when the language and plots are just as sophisticated as that I’m adult books? The only difference is one is told from a teenage perspective.

But, anyway, for the final year of my MFA, I have been writing an adult novel because I felt like I needed to. I had to prove I wasn’t just a YA writer.

And so I’m three months into this final year, and I am…stuck.

I am not enthused to write my adult novel in the same way I want to write YA.

I am drawn to YA because, I love writing from the teenage perspective, because:

• I love the raw emotion of YA, how we are writing about teenagers who feel so much but don’t yet know how to make sense of their emotions.
• Teenagehood is a time of change, it’s a time where your identity becomes really important, but also when we might not yet understood who we are and who we want to become.
• It’s a time of firsts – of first loves, crushes, new experiences. It’s an exciting and scary time where everything can feel like the worst thing in the world.
• And it can also be a time of loss, of heartbreak, of grief. A time of great pain.
• A time when friendships are very important and where other relationships start to become significant.
• It’s a time of great pressure, where we’re told our choices are important ones, when we’re trying to make sure we apply for the right courses/degrees while not knowing for sure who we want to be when we are older. We are expected to cerment our futures when we don’t know ourselves.
• It’s a time where we begin to get more independence and power, while still feeling trapped and oppressed.
• It’s a time when our bodies change, and we might not be mentally ready for such changes or we may feel like we are, but we are still getting used to our new selves.
• It’s a time when we’re struggling to understand ourselves and those around us because everything seems both new and familiar.
• And it’s a time where we often feel lonely and scared, as if no one else can understand us.

And that’s why I like writing YA, because whether I’m writing a heartfelt verse novel about trauma or a tense thriller or a horror, I can be raw and emotional when writing these stories. I can write about trauma and firsts and confusion and emerging identities and fears.

And I found when I was trying to write adult fiction I just couldn’t do any of this. I felt like my narrator needed to have a stronger sense of who she was. I couldn’t have that sense of confusion or write about coming-of-age experiences. I had to place her in adult life, giving her a job. My focus in the story therefore became her family and her life, rather than her emotional struggle and her sense of self, amid the tense thriller plot I had planned. And I found myself writing in a different style.

I write in a bodily way. I’ve been told this is what makes my writing sound ‘YA’, therefore I had to change this when writing adult. My sentence structures changed, my word choice and syntax changed. An MFA lecturer told me to lose the short paragraphs.

But it didn’t feel like me writing it, and I felt like I was writing a story my heart wasn’t in. I couldn’t connect with my main character. I didn’t feel this overwhelming need to write her story.

After a couple months of struggling to write this adult story, I found I’d lost the joy of writing. And so earlier this month, I began Nova Ren Suma’s four-week workshop on crafting the YA novel – a workshop I’d signed up for before I started the adult novel – and I felt relief that I was allowed to write YA again.

This workshop helped me find the joy in writing again, because I was writing YA again and giving myself permission to do this. In just over two weeks I had 17k words of a YA horror written that I couldn’t stop thinking about. And this was more words than I had written in three months for the adult novel.

Yesterday, I realised that I need to be writing YA for the final MFA year too. I am a YA writer. It’s what I connect with. It’s what I feel compelled to write. Writing YA interests and fuels me, and I think part of it is because I still feel like a teenager and because I never truly got to be a teenager myself. I became chronically ill in my teens and I feel I missed out on a lot. Writing YA therefore soothes me.

I can’t write something that doesn’t fuel and soothe me. I can’t write something that I am not connecting with.

Last night, I read out the opening of my adult novel and the opening of the new YA horror to my parents. They liked both, but they said the YA sounded more like me. And that’s the thing: when I am writing that adult novel, I don’t feel like me. I’ve said this often enough to my husband, but I still felt like I had something to prove by writing this adult novel.

I have written adult before. I’ve released books as Elin Annalise, and these are adult romances. But I wrote each of those quickly because I wanted to at the time. I didn’t write them to prove I was a ‘serious’ writer. I didn’t spend a year writing them, knowing my MFA grade would be based on them.

I am confident I’ll get a better grade when writing YA for my MFA. I am planning to do a PhD and because I’ll be spending six years on that, I’ve already decided I’m definitely writing YA for it. There was no question about it. YA is my strength, and I want to hone my craft and get better at YA. I’m a YA writer, and it’s a relief to admit that. Sure, I may want to finish this adult novel another time, but I don’t want to feel pressured into doing it. It needs to feel authentic for me.

I emailed my MFA supervisor last night to see if I can change my MFA novel to my new YA horror. It felt like a big moment. Fingers crossed he says yes.