And So It Begins

Two posts from the same blog dealing with YA writing - and showing I know/knew nothing about by pointing out I was already asking the wrong questions and had incorrect assumptions.

Ally Carter who blogs over at Ally's Diary is ready to open up your mind to being able to write for the YA market.

Try these to give you the beginnings of understanding.

The Wrong Questions: This one blew my preconceptions out of the water.

Questions That Aren't Getting Asked At All: and this one clearly defines what a potential YA writer needs to know.

This throws a whole knew light on things. As many of you already know, a lot of my writing revolves around children or teens already. It may very well be possible, I'm already writing YA stuff. Some of it is definitely adult stuff with teens or kids involved but some is definitely with a teenage main character dealing with issues from a teen perspective.

The longest short story I've written so far is called "Confused Love" and that is definitely about a teenager with grownup issues from a teen perspective. At 9000+ words I cut out a lot of stuff I could rework and put back in to make it a longer work. 50-60,000 words for a YA novel shouldn't be difficult. It's NaNoWriMo in whatever time frame I want.

My current Historical Dark Fiction piece called Newland has a teenage girl as the main character. It's currently outlined to come in at 90-100k. A big point made in Ally's posts was to ensure something interesting was happening on every page for a YA novel. Although only in the first draft and obviously in need of revision once I get the story on paper, I think I could cut it down further if required. Still Ally also mentions that with the release of Twilight & Harry Potter, word count limits aren't what they used to be.

Could it be that I'm already a YA writer????

More research required...