Tuesday, January 5, 2010

The Book from No Man's Land

  • When I started writing TAoCBS, I thought it was a middle grade novel.
  • When I brought the first chapter to my critique group, they said, “Oh no. This is too sexy for a midgrade. It has to be young adult.”
  • When I had a first page analyzed at the SCBWI-MI fall conference, the panel members were aghast that I called it a YA. “This voice is obviously midgrade.” They spoke at length about this designation, implying that the author didn’t know what she was doing. (Thanks.)
  • When I entered this novel in a query contest, I referred to it as “upper midgrade.” (hedging my bets)
  • When I got the rejection letter, it said, “30k is really not long enough for today's YA market.” (Yes, of course, but I thought it was a MG.)
Currently, I am revising TAoCBS in hopes that someday it will be bigger and better. But when I resubmit, I don’t know how I’m going to classify it.

Chuck Sambuchino did an interesting interview with literary agent, Erin Murphy, in which she refers to the MG/YA distinction as more of a “scale than a line.”


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2 comments:

  1. UnknownJanuary 5, 2010 at 8:25 PM

    UGH.

    I *so* feel your pain. My best loved trunk novel is one of those MG/YA middle-territory monsters. I was so sick of hearing people say it was the other no matter what I reclassified it as.

    I don't know how to fix this--I ended up retiring my novel with this problem. I hope you find a more productive solution!!!

    ReplyDelete
  2. Ann FinkelsteinJanuary 6, 2010 at 6:13 AM

    Thanks, Beth. It's kind of like characters exist at age 12, then make a quantum leap to age 16 and the intervening years don't exist.

    ReplyDelete

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