The workshop I'm in now is Ingrid Murray's Beautiful You, Radiant You. I answered some of her question prompts to get started and then thought about the type of images I'd like to incorporate into the layout. Of course, books and writing and pens were a part of that. This led me to thinking about an image I'd seen in an online Guardian newspaper article about children and books. This is the article here. It's a great image - a boy sitting in a window, reading a book.
That led me to thinking about who my ideal readership would be - and the answer was YA/teens.
YA is the genre I probably read the most, and when I originally wrote the first version of my stalled novel, the characters fit into this age bracket.
So, why did I change? The first reason is because someone in a writing class I went to said breaking into YA was very hard, if not nearly impossible. The second reason is that I believed at the time (and it may have been true AT THAT TIME) that there were certain areas that were taboo and I didn't want to restrict my writing in any way.
And so, eight years have passed and I'm only now discovering a second factor that has contributed to my stalled novel, the first one being the analytical, logical Me in the driving seat, and the second writing outside my preferred genre.
I'm still on a hiatus from the writing, but the break has been very productive, thanks to 21 Secrets. That inner voice that urged me to "create without words" has helped me so much to learn again how to create with words.
A huge round of applause and cheers to inner voices, to listening to them, and to art journalling at 21 Secrets!
Image by Mary R. Vogt from Morguefile.com
4 responses:
And so ends another myth! :-) Yeah! You write what you want to write. After it is written, you can worry about whether it is suitable to YA or adults. The first Harry Potter was the only one written for the young, but as an adult, I loved it. The rest were written for both young and adults, and they all sold. Really well!
So, throw out that myth, and write what you want. Good luck!
Hi Diane! Write what you want to write, that's great advice.
I can't believe how much I limited myself for the past eight years - without being conscious of what I was doing by holding onto the belief that I shouldn't write YA. No wonder the novel stalled! The Muse does not understand SHOULD or SHOULDN'T... it just wants to write the story it wants to write.
I'm taking this year off writing to get my creative impulses flowing properly again at 21 Secrets (the Art Journalling workshops) and then dive back into the story next year.
Oh Lisa I had to discover this as well!! I never knew I was a YA writer....we are soo well met and you are going to rock!!!
Thanks Natasha! Well met indeed. :)
Post a Comment