Yelling about YA as an age category, of course

Hello from finally-sunny NYC 🌞

What a weird weather week it’s been! On Tuesday I ventured out into Manhattan for the launch event / party for Casey McQuiston’s latest novel, THE PAIRING, which I read earlier this summer and which absolutely wrecked me in the best way. As I was sitting on the fourth floor of Barnes & Noble, I watched the skies slowly open up and flash lightning behind Casey. The theme for the event was Italian Riviera and it was so wild to watch a thunderstorm while the decor was all hot summer in Italy1.

The rest of the week I kept waiting for the rain to come back, and at least in my little corner of Brooklyn, it was…not as bad as I’d anticipated. That said, it’s still very nice to have lovely sunny weather this weekend.

From the heart 💗

I’ve done a lot of thinking this week. Which is both good and bad, because I’m very good at letting my thinking time spiral into something unhealthy. This week, though, I think it was mostly good.

The thinking I did was about my relationship to creativity, to writing, and to publishing. Somewhere along the line, over the 10 years I’ve been trying to publish my novels and the 20+ years I’ve dreamed of being a published author, something broke. Writing became a tool, a vehicle through which I will have my dreams of publishing and being known and, ideally, being adored, come true.

I’ve wanted to publish since I was probably seven. I’ve been writing stories as far back as I remember, and even before I learned to write, I loved telling and hearing stories. It didn’t matter if it was a new story or one I’d heard a million times; there was something so thrilling, intoxicating, about being told a story. I could close my eyes and see it play out in my brain, I could listen to the timbre of the storyteller’s voice and recognize what was to come. I could build castles in my imagination, fill them with spectators, and regale them with my own finely-woved tales.

In middle school, when I had to do the dishes, I’d put on music and lose myself in a story of my own making. I still remember the thrills of those days, as I became not just a tween girl doing the dishes, but a beautiful maiden, off on adventures, riding horses and swooning over cute boys2 and always, always, saving the day in the end.

Stories have been the fabric of my life. When I’m stressed or can’t sleep or bored, I tell myself a story.

Writing, and being a novelist, felt like a natural outcome from all that storytelling. And for a long time, it fed my soul.

Until it didn’t.

Until it became a burden, a way that I hoped to get out of a tough financial situation, a way to feed the beast inside me that craves validation and attention, a way to prove my worth to anyone who’s ever believed in me.

Suddenly writing was a chore. The books that bloomed to life out of love and excitement were weights on my chest, pinning me down. The book I wanted to see go on sub this year turned out to need a major restructuring and then page-one rewrite. I took a month-long writing break and last week I thought I was done, ready to write again, ready to emerge unscathed from my hole and dive, unfettered, into the waters of creativity. Alas.

I need to heal my relationship to my writing. I will not live in a world where my love for this form of creativity and storytelling sets my teeth on edge. So I’ll be doing two things:

1. I’m reserving poetry for myself and my own uses. But Karis, you say, You’ve never actually published a poem, it’s literally always been just for you? And to that I say, first of all, shut up, and secondly, I’ve always had the goal of publishing poetry hanging over the page. I’m deleting it. I may share my poems with friends and family, here or on Instagram, but I’m not going to submit it to journals and try to traditionally publish it. Because that dream has done nothing but sour my relationship to poetry.

2. I’m going to keep drafting REVENGE, my adult romance WIP, but I’m going to keep it to myself for a while longer. I’m removing the expectation of going on sub with it anytime soon, and allowing myself to just write it slowly, to learn this new age category and revel in this genre I love, and to hone it to perfection before I try to do anything with it.

Now, if you’ve got suggestions or tips and tricks for recovering a love of writing and a healthy relationship to creativity, hit me up. I’m all ears!

From the camera roll 📸

From the page ✍️

This is not so much me wading into discourse as it is the discourse of the week coinciding slightly with what I want to write about. That’s right, folks, we’re talking about YA as a age category!

No, this won’t actually be about what Twitter has been discussing, which is whether adults are allowed to read YA3. Instead, I’m going to talk about my other pet peeve when it comes to the YA age category: when writers are flippant about why they chose to make their stories young adult. You know what I’m talking about: the author of a new YA is on a podcast, or being interviewed on TV, or writing a guest blog post, and they are asked or decide to disclose why they made their story YA.

“It wasn’t a conscious decision,” they might say, “I don’t think about marketing or age categories when I write. I just write the story that wants to be told, and my agent/editor tells me where to position it in the market.”4

EEEE, buzzer sounds, wrong answer!

It’s the wrong answer because when you’re writing books that are going to be marketed primarily toward teens, you should be intentional about it.

YA is more than a marketing category, is the thing. Obviously the marketing is important so the books will reach the right readers, but that’s key, isn’t it? The right readers are and should be teens. If you’re marketing your book as YA, you should absolutely know why, and it can’t just be “well my editor thought we’d get more $$ this way cause my book has a teen character.”

Why does your book have a teen character? Why is the character’s teenness important to the story? Why are you the one to write this story for teens?

Listen, I don’t love being holier-than-thou5, but sometimes I’ve gotta do it! I’ve gotta get on a soapbox and tell you that literature for teens has a really important job, and there’s a burden of responsibility that falls on the shoulders of those who write for youth. I’m not saying we need to but blinders on them and keep them from seeing any part of reality that is ugly, but that when we’re writing and aiming that literature at an audience that should primarily consist of teens, we ought to be a little mindful.

ON ANOTHER NOTE, I find those answers really disrespectful to kidlit writers. Writing for teens — and younger ages — is actually a real skill that people hone and develop over years. Because you aren’t talking down to them, but you are meeting them where they’re at. All of us adults have been kids and teens, but by the time we publish, most of us aren’t anymore. Acting like writing for teens is just the same as writing for adults but slapping a “14+” label on the book is really disrespectful to authors who spend years thinking through their stories and crafting them for that age in mind.

But that’s an aside, really. The truth is — I think we need to be aware of the responsibility that is providing literature for teens. Just as you couldn’t take a college class and deliver it to teens — you’d want to make adjustments and ensure that it’s actually tailored to them, and meeting them where they’re at — you can’t just take a for-adults story, slap a cutesy lil “YA” label on it, and sally forth.

But what do y’all think? Discuss.

Alla prossima 👋

Friends. Israel is bombing schools where refugees are sheltering. I know they’ve done this for months now, but it seems things are escalating. The time is now to put pressure on our reps (& candidates, cough Kamala cough) to actively stop shipping weapons and money to Israel. They’re carrying out this genocide not just with our permission but with our HELP. They couldn’t do it without us. That’s sickening, and it means we have a real obligation to do whatever we can to end this.

I’ll be emailing Kamala again, I guess. If anyone knows of a better way to get the message across, let me know. I’m just taking my cues from smarter people at this point. Because I know this is unconscionable and cannot be continued.

That’s all for this week <3

— Karis xoxo