This shouldn't even be necessary...

...but if I have to read one more thread/post/article/thing wherein the author of said thread/post/article/thing does not know that there is a difference between children's literature, MG and YA, I'm going to go into conniptions. I have to get this off of my chest.

Now, for those of you who do not follow Editorial Anonymous, YOU SHOULD. Her blog is geared towards those of us writing in the children's/MG/YA genres and contains tons of useful information about the genre and distinctions between the different "levels" of writing for those of us under the age of 18. In her words:

I'm a bit of a curmudgeon when it comes to these designations. I just don't care what "chapter book," "middle grade," or "YA" are currently supposed to mean. Why don't we simply speak in terms of ages, or grades?

That is, I think, a great way to identify your audience (ie: girls ages 11-13, or boys ages 15-17). However, since you need to correspond to the industry conventions when you're querying, I'm going to try to break this down in nifty list format, as is my way.

DISCLAIMER: The ages used as examples in these definitions should be treated as such. Also, unfortunately there is a lot of bleed over between children's literature and MG, and between MG and YA. It's confusing as hell and I'm not going to spend a boatload of time going through all of the exceptions. These are just rules of thumb.

1. CHILDREN'S LITERATURE: This is a messy term. It can mean, in various contexts, "all writing for those members of the human race who are currently not the age of majority" or "all writing for those members of the human race who are currently not over 10 years of age." This means that the agent who says she reps "children's literature" might represent anything from picture books to YA, and, generally, you can assume that she does unless she specifies otherwise.

I'd like to see "children's literature" correspond directly and without any muzzy edges to the second definition I provided. This means that it would include things like picture books, chapter books, and novels written for kids. (Think the books that are available at the Scholastic Book Fairs for elementary school students.) There are things you shouldn't write about in children's literature. Dropping the f-bomb is probably a no-no. So is negative characterization of parents and "trusted adult" types.

Children's literature (of the second type) is not MG. However, some may choose to read MG while they are still considered children's lit readers by the publishing world. This is perfectly fine. You should write your children's books with your intended audience in mind and let the individual reader decide what she wants to read.

2. MG: Stands for "middle grade." Should remind you of the term "middle school." MG is generally considered to be literature for those humans with 11-13 years of life under their belts. MG is not children's lit and it isn't YA lit either, and that seems to cause a lot of confusion. In MG, I would still, personally, be hesitant to tackle some of the issues we have no problem with tackling in YA lit - or, at least, tackling them in the same way. In MG literature, the author should generally have a negative view of "edgy" goings-on. Drugs can be taken, but they lead down a bad road. Flirtation can occur, but there should be no sex. Cursing and swearing is limited to things like "piss-face" and "dang!". If you want a good example of how to incorporate swearing into MG, I would look at the early Harry Potter books. And the later Harry Potter books, for that matter, to see the transition between fakey-swears and full-out-swears.

This seems to be the genre everyone forgets when talking about literature for under-18s. REMEMBER THAT IT EXISTS. Correct people when they tell you that their novel geared towards 12 year-olds is YA. Explain to people the difference when they complain that there is nothing in the YA section for their 13 year-old to read.

MG literature is not YA. However, some may choose to read YA while they are still considered MG readers by the publishing world. This is perfectly fine. You should write your MG books with your intended audience in mind and let the individual reader decide what she wants to read.

3. YA: Stands for "young adult." Emphasis on the "adult." You may write whatever you damn well please in a YA novel as long as you can write about it in a novel written for an adult audience. This means that anything with bestiality (or water sports, or graphic incest...), bloody graphic violence, and overly explicit sex (I will not answer what qualifies as explicit because you are all intelligent people and should know. If you really want a rule of thumb, it should probably not resemble this: "PENIS PENIS PENIS PENIS COCKKKK!!!!!!!!!!!" K?) will be a hard sell. You may use your discretion. Everyone has different opinions on what is appropriate or not in YA fic, but then again everyone has opinions on what is appropriate or not in adult fic as well.

The major distinction between MG and YA comes in two parts: first, the "coming-of-age." I define coming-of-age as having to deal with adult problems with a teenage mind. Remember the scene in Juno when she comes back home after learning that the potential adoptive father of her unborn child has decided to get a divorce? Her father asks her what she's been up to, and Juno responds: "Oh, nothing. I've just been out dealing with things way beyond my maturity level." Bam. Coming-of-age. Second, the edgy stuff I talked about previously is no longer dealt with in black and white terms. Now the characters are exposed to drugs, sex, and rock 'n' roll, and they decide for themselves how they feel about them.

So there it is folks. Rant over. Hope this cleared things up for some of you.

A Double-Take

I'm currently in Montréal for Worldcon, and I happened to sit in on a panel about taboos in writing, just because, you know, it was there and we've discussed edgy fic a lot on this blog. Anyway, as I'm sitting there, a woman in the audience asked about the prevalence of YA lit in the SFF market, and the panelists could not name any GLBTQ YA fiction.

I was floored. ON THE FLOOR I WAS FLOORED.

Clearly this situation has to be remedied.

Now this is what you should do, YAYAers: Go out into the world and tell everyone how progressive and nifty YA fiction is. Tell them how we hit those taboos and we hit them hard. Tell them how moving, exciting, literary and deathless the prose of your favorite YA writer is. Tell everyone you can, because YA isn't getting the recognition it deserves!

You Know What I Mean

If you are reading this blog, chances are you've been there. It's the darkest time in that hellacious novel-writing process, the one that makes death by fire seem like a balmy day on the Florida Keys in comparison. It stinks. It sucks. It resembles death of an emotional sort except that death would mean that the suffering would end.

I'm talking about round one of revisions.

Let's break it down in nifty list format:

1. Sophie is contented with her life and her future prospects.
2. Sophie decides it's time to write another book.
3. Sophie takes out her super artistical tools of the trade (Microsoft Word)
4. Sophie composes a brilliant novel filled with breathtaking characters and deathless prose.
5. Sophie retires, leaving the novel to its own devices for a week or so, in order to rest her genius mind.

Now things get ugly:

6. Novel gets evil glint in its eye.
7. Novel conspires with its sociopathic friends Computer and Word to delete the genius and add the dreck.
8. Novel cackles manically.
9. Sophie opens Word after one week, prepared to make two or three edits to her amazing novel.
10. Sophie reads first sentence.
11. Sophie sobs.
12. Sophie runs to the fridge and opens up a new gallon of Rocky Road.

I'm currently in the middle of a massive rewrite and overhaul of this novel. I explained my pain best to my fellow YAYAs: "Editing ST is like sleeping with that really hot guy who's also a total dickwad. It feels so good when it's happening and you think you're in love but when it's over all you have left is shame."

Bisexuality in YA Fiction

Of course, questioning lesbian or bi teenagers can always head over to the gay and lesbian section at their local bookstore if they live in an urban or suburban area, since most of the massive chain stores like Barnes and Noble and Borders now carry these sections...

This option also doesn't help the large number of young teenage girls who don't yet know they're lesbian or bisexual - kids like me, who manage to make it all the way through high school feeling a little different but not yet able to put a finger on what it is. A YA book about well-adjusted lesbian teens might help them name it sooner - and begin to build a foundation for understanding that lesbians/bi women can be happy, too.

- afterellen.com

Let's talk for a minute about life imitating art. I'm sure everyone can point to a book that affected them so strongly that they remember their exact reaction to it years after. For me, I remember reading A Tale of Two Cities by Charles Dickens and being completely blown away. I cried for hours after I read the last chapter -- mostly because I had fallen in love with Sydney Carton. I had similar reactions to The Phantom Tollbooth and Animal Farm.

I would have liked to have realized that I am bisexual because of a book. Unfortunately, that wasn't the case for me. I discovered bisexuality through a GLBT awareness site, which I was exposed to during my brief time running the concession stand for the GSA dance in sophomore year. I mean, Jessica Alba helped. (I LOVE YOU JESSICA.) But for the most part, the only information I received about sexuality tended on the extremes of the spectrum -- homosexual or heterosexual. There was no middle ground.

At fifteen, I'd discovered many of the authors who I feel have influenced my 'coming-of-age.' I read Dickens, Lewis Carroll, Garth Nix, Terry Pratchett, Tamora Pierce, and reread Norton Juster and C.S. Lewis. Besides the less-than-palatable revelations about Carroll's personal life, the majority of these authors had, unconsciously or not, maintained heteronormativity in their novels. When other sexualities were mentioned, they were kept to the fringes.

I found GLBT themes in webcomics and fanfiction. (The trend I noticed was, webcomics were generally f/f and fanfiction was generally m/m.) The first mention of an openly bisexual character I'd ever seen was in the webcomic Khaos Komix. Later, I found that Scrubs, a show from which I draw many life lessons, thank you very much, addressed GLBT themes with the same aplomb they did everything else, and that helped the inner Sophie rally against heteronormativity.

However, I would have preferred to have read it in a book.

The fact is, that although homosexual characters are becoming more and more common in YA fiction, there are still comparatively few bisexual characters. Afterellen.com stated, in a more recent article, that "books about gay male teens continue to outnumber those about lesbian and bisexual girls, and books about bisexual girls and queer girls of color number in the single digits." (See here.) I think this phenomenon has direct roots in our society's continued difficulty in outwardly addressing and talking about female sexuality. (A boy who has many sexual partners is a player, a girl who has many sexual partners is a slut. She is a double-triple-quadruple slut if she has sex with male and female partners.) I think we've come to a point where male sexuality can be openly discussed, however, female sexuality is still repressed. (Brief side note here: I can't remember the last time I read about a bisexual male character in a YA novel! Obviously male sexuality is repressed in other ways, but honestly, we're all being repressed all over the place, and I don't particularly want to get into that now.)

So here is my question for all of you: What are some YA novels featuring bisexual characters that you have read? If you want to suggest novels with homosexual characters as well, I'm not going to stop you - but I want to read about bis. :P The suggested books are going to be placed in a sidebar list on this page for future reference.

Snafu, with Emphasis on the FU

Ahem.

*steps on a soapbox*

Due to the recent fuckwittery at Amazon.com regarding "adult content" and sales ranks, I can point you, dear reader, towards several resources, in addition to Hannah's post below this one,to learn about what the feckity feck has been happening. A very concise and colorful summary has been posted at Smart Bitches, Trashy Books (Which reminds me: Amazon Rank.), and there are concurrent discussions happening over Twitter (search #amazonfail for the fallout), Live Journal, and the Absolute Write Water Cooler.

While many of these places encourage boycotts, letters to Amazon managers, and signing petitions (again, see Hannah's post below this one), we at YAYA have decided on a different way of approaching this issue. And we are doing it in typical YAYA fashion.

When we come across censorship of any kind - especially the kind that makes us physically ill - we promptly engage in the kind of behavior that the censors would frown upon. (We also tend to run naked through the streets with streamers and ribbons in our hair and around our limbs, throwing confetti at homophobic passers-by.) So! We're starting our very own celebration of GLBTQ YA literature. It's called (well, I've decided I'd like to call it) The Happy Hour, and I fully expect it to take us two months to wind down.

Yes, I'm Blue: Amazon Discriminates Against YA Queer Literature

Something fishy is going on at Amazon.com. Search for "homosexuality," for instance, and here are some of the first books that pop up:

A Parent's Guide to Preventing Homosexuality
Can Homosexuality Be Healed?
You Don't Have to Be Gay: Hope and Freedom for Males Struggling With Homosexuality or for Those Who Know of Someone Who Is


Specify that you're looking for the most popular books featuring homosexuality, and you still won't find literary classics such as Brokeback Mountain, or even non-fiction books like the biography of Harvey Milk.

Amazon recently released the following statement:


In consideration of our entire customer base, we exclude "adult" material from appearing in some searches and best seller lists. Since these lists are generated using sales ranks, adult materials must also be excluded from that feature.

Since their "entire customer base" is apparently offended by homosexual content (it's not as if any of these excluded books could be made into, say, Oscar-nominated movies or something), it's necessary to disable the sales rank functions for these books. The ability for a customer to determine their popularity disappears.

Never fear--you can still find Playboy on their sales rankings, along with all the other straight erotica you could ever want.

You can still search for vibrators, though I'm surprised they don't require a contract that you'll only use them for heterosexual fantasizing.

Lest you think this only affects erotica, meta_writer on livejournal is compiling a list of all the books affected. A few of the YAs include the Rainbow Boys trilogy by Alex Sanchez and the Am I Blue? book of essays and short stories by Marion Dane Bauer.

Just after my older sister came out of the closet, she used Am I Blue? as the subject of her ninth grade book report.

The teen years are a confusing time for sexuality. Books like Alex Sanchez's and anthologies like Am I Blue? help show teens questioning their place in a heteronormative society that it's okay to be different, that they're fine how they are, that they don't have to change.

Now they'll find books asking if they can be cured and telling them how their parents could have prevented them.


EDIT: Here is a petition against Amazon's new policy. http://www.thepetitionsite.com/1/in-protest-at-amazons-new-adult-policy

How Do You Deal With Criticism?

This is really me searching for advice.

Who do you listen to you? Fellow writers, your best friend, your teacher? If someone critiques you, what process do you go through to separate the valuable stuff from the bullshit? How do you keep a critique that seems like a critique of you as a writer in general, not just of a certain work, from bringing you down completely?

Give me your methods, folks.

<3 hannah

Planning Required?

In honor of the upcoming Melissa Marr interview, we've been keeping these posts mostly on the subject of fantasy.

As I’ve said earlier, I am not a fantasy writer. I write about first love, friendship, and self discovery, which could easily be in fantasy stories, but I place them in the (sometimes fantastical) world of high school.

But maybe that’s what makes me qualified to write about this topic. For the most part, I am a fantasy outsider.

When I was younger, I used to write fantasy stories all the time, but I’d never finish my work. This could be attributed to the inexperience and impatience that sometimes comes with age, but it could also be attributed to writing myself into corners because of lack of outlining or world building.

I eventually changed genres, but I didn’t change my methods. I’ll normally know my beginning, my ending, and a vague middle, but I don’t know in detail how to get from point to point. Luckily, this works for most of my novels.

This did not work for my first NaNoWriMo novel, a YA Urban Fantasy with mind readers, psychics, vampires, witches, and warlocks. For this, I had no idea where I was going, just a concept in mind with no ending in sight. As I started reading through the draft, I decided it needed too much work and trunked it. Maybe it was something else, or maybe it was because when I write fantasy and don’t plan, things can quickly get convoluted. I just know that the NaNo motto "No plot? No problem!" is not too accurate when it comes to me and fantasy; it's more like "No plot? Big problem!"

So…the smart thing for me would be to not write fantasy, right?

Except that, just a while ago, I came up with a fantasy idea that I love. In a day I was able to work out the majority of the plot, but still, I’m hesitant to actually write it. I know how I am with fantasy. An extensive outline, world building, medieval research…it would probably all be required for me to write it and write it well, and even then…

I guess time will tell if I have the guts to go out of my comfort zone and the strength to go through and do something I don’t like doing, planning.

Readers, do you think that the fantasy genre requires more planning than other genres? Why or why not? If you think it does, how do you--or would you, if you don't write fantasy--handle all the planning?

St. Francis Receiving the Stigma

If I had a motto, it would be, "Okay, but, seriously."

So. Okay. But. Seriously.

Sophie and I are the same age, live in the same county, and are both halfies of some kind. And we're both basically beasts. But that's mostly where the similarities end.

While Sophie's writing about faeries, I'm writing about eating disorders. While she's writing about fairy-dust-drugs, I'm writing about actual drugs. When she's writing about explosions, I'm writing about the families of the people who are killed in those explosions, trying to put their lives back together.

I'm not trying to qualify myself over Soph's. Just the freakin opposite. But that's the stigma.

There's this stigma that it's easier to write fantasy, sci fi, chick lit, than it is to write anything edgy. As someone who's always fallen more to the realistic-edgy side, I've definitely seen my literary brethren sticking up their noses at any manuscripts that don't include mental trauma, car crashes, and child abuse.

I'm exaggerating, obviously, but bear with me for a second.









Okay. But. Seriously.


I've had agents tell me my prose is too dark. I've had beta readers tell me my prose is too dark. Hell, I'm surprised my cats aren't telling me my prose is too dark. It's not a problem with every manuscript, and it's not a problem with every agent, but it's a problem that's there.

And the truth is, being dark is easy.

I'm a teenager. Let's be honest, here. Life isn't a bowl of cherries.

Sometimes the hardest thing to do is lighten up.

And there's a stigma. There's the idea that people like Sophie, who write fantasy, and people like Madeleine and Megan, who write chick-lit YA (is that offensive? Hope not) aren't real writers. That they don't work as hard, or appreciate the craft as much, as someone who writes straight-up literary. Straight-up real life.

And I sort of have to question when real life became better than fantasy. When real life became better than anything.

I'm not immune to it, though. I've got one manuscript I couldn't finish because it was science fiction, and I couldn't reconcile my literary side with the part of me that wanted to write this manuscript. I couldn't bring myself to write science fiction. And I've got one manuscript that has a maybe-angel in it, and even querying it as Suburban Fantasy (made that up...cute, eh?) was difficult for me. I'll admit to magical realism every once in a while, but I practically got hives when I wrote my introductory post and admitted my stuff has fantasy elements.

But it does. And if I didn't feel that pressure...the pressure that if it's light, it's not important, and if it's fantasy, it's not real, keeps me from writing certain things, and keeps me from querying manuscripts in a way that would be most productive for them. Because even though I know it's real writing...I don't feel it.

So I guess Sophie and I have more in common than I thought. We both live in the same town. We're both sixteen. We're both halfies. And we both write fan...

Nope. Can't say it.


<3 hannah