Scribes & Archers

Hello! Today I’m back with another Realm Makers-inspired post, and this one is going to be a collaborative series! Stay tuned to the end to check out the other contributors’ posts.

The idea of this series is thanks to Shannon Dittemore (who is absolutely lovely, by the way). She was curious about how writing develops for authors who start writing young and default to YA when they’re getting started, whether they stick to YA or “graduate” to older audiences (“graduate” is my word, not hers). This made me think, which then made me want to explore the idea and see what other authors said! So here are some of my thoughts on how my writing has changed or stayed the same as I’ve gotten into my twenties, and the other contributing authors will be sharing their thoughts in their own posts!

The Journey

I started writing when I was around seven years old, so I started writing YA from the perspective of “teenagers are so grown-up! I want to be a teenager!” The teenagers were some of my favorite people to hang out with at church because they were so cool (and to their credit, they were great at including younger kids and never seeing us as a burden to hang out with). Plus, I was reading things like Nancy Drew, The Boxcar Children, Happy Hollisters, etc. where the main characters–or the oldest siblings among the main characters–were teenagers. (This probably contributed to my interest in teenagers because I am an oldest sibling.)

Then I became a teenager myself and, for a while, still thought teenagers were more grown-up than grown-ups gave them credit for. By that point I was reading heaps of “actual” YA that was 1) reinforcing this idea and 2) just really interesting to me at the time. So, naturally, I continued to write YA because I wanted to write about people my age and a little older, I wanted to emulate the books I was reading that I enjoyed so much, and I wanted to show teenagers as capable of saving the world.

In my upper teens I realized that teenagers aren’t really that grown-up after all and I was starting to get tired of the common tropes and patterns in YA. I got tired of the bad-example romances, the lack of competent adults, selfish characters who never faced consequences, etc. But I enjoyed the YA that broke those stereotypical molds–the books with healthy romances, competent mentors, real-life consequences, and characters who actually grew up–and I wanted to be like those books. I wanted to break the unhealthy patterns of YA and give teenagers something better to read. That much is still true. I still believe that teenagers need good, edifying literature that combats the unhealthy lessons of mainstream YA, and I still want to contribute to that.

I started writing Calligraphy Guild when I was seventeen, and it was specifically written to bypass a lot of common YA tropes. The main character’s parents are alive and involved, she’s in a lasting relationship moving toward marriage, many of the characters around her are competent adults, she’s not some special chosen one who somehow manages to save the world all by herself, and she has challenges she has to work through and grow from. It was meant to be YA that actually shows what it’s like to be a teenager coming into your own in a healthy way and stepping up to adulthood. What I found pretty quickly, though, is that the main demographic buying and enjoying it was not teenagers; it was 20-30-something young moms. So without intending to, I was already branching out from writing YA in a practical sense with Calligraphy Guild.

“Graduation”

Some of my books are more intentionally for older audiences. Lightning and Thunder are NA (New Adult); my next sci-fi idea is Adult (for the age of the character and for themes); I have a couple of fantasy projects that I’m waffling between calling YA and calling NA. And I have a good many that are still going to be YA, that are still meant to serve the purpose I’ve come to have for my YA: to combat harmful trends in the category and edify and encourage teenagers. A lot of them are ideas that have held over from when all I was writing was YA, so we’ll see how the balance shifts as I continue to move forward and develop new ideas, but they’re still important to me and I still want to show that teenagers can be grown-up and impact the world.

In a nutshell, my initial answer to Shannon’s musing was that I’m tired of YA’s tropes–and the tone of that was that I’m tired of YA as a whole. Which can sometimes be true, especially in terms of reading YA. But as I thought it over more, I realized that while the way that I consume YA books has changed, and my purpose for writing YA has changed, I do still have a love for the category and I still think it’s a very important thing to write. I may be writing both YA and NA/Adult, my intention with YA may have changed, but I don’t expect to stop writing YA anytime soon. My YA releases just might end up mixed with older books here and there, as well.

Despite the audience that has come to pick it up, Calligraphy Guild is still my favorite YA release to date. I still call it that (though I’ve also acknowledged that I should put it in front of older readers, too) because that was always its intention, and still is. I still want for younger readers to pick it up and see a character who values growing up, getting married, getting advice from the adults around her, pursuing her work diligently, etc. I think those things are often lacking in YA, and they’re such important pieces of growing up (marriage obviously being more conditional than the others). I’m so glad that older readers have enjoyed the book, but it was always intended to encourage teenagers.

As for NA/Adult, I haven’t released any yet unless you count Calligraphy Guild for both categories, lol. And Lightning is honestly probably not my favorite–not because I dislike it (though I have gotten rather burnt out with it and there’s probably some of that burn-out talking), but because I think I have even stronger stories coming. The Dark War Trilogy is a fantasy series I may put out as NA when it’s finally written (or as YA; it’s one of the waffly ones), and the Adult sci-fi project I mentioned is a heavy one on my heart–though I don’t think I’m ready to write it yet.

I’m excited to see what the future holds, what stories God puts in front of me to write, and how He uses my work to bless both teenagers and adults.

Contributing Posts

JD Wolfwrath – August 19th

Maegan M. Simpson – August 21st

M.C. Kennedy – August 24th

Nicole Dust – August 25th

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