Like every aspiring fiction writer, I spent a lot of time reading advice articles as I sought to break into the field. I compulsively read the Publishers Weekly rights report to find out what was selling. I absorbed and extrapolated from articles on trends in children’s lit. “Go to a bookstore and see what they stock,” was a piece of advice I received. Fantasy, retellings, thrillers and x meets y seemed to dominate the shelves of every YA section I visited. What was selling? Everything except what I felt compelled to write, it seemed. And yet, what moved me—what kept bringing me back to the page—remained the same: a desire to burrow into those innermost chambers of the heart and its most tender feelings; to explore that moment in life when the future approaches and we have to decide how we will greet it: with jaw clenched or arms open.
As I started querying my manuscript for Between Two Skies, I started to notice a trend in responses. Yes, the writing was good—beautiful, even. The voice was compelling, the characters well drawn. But the story was a quiet one. And there was a judgment attached to that. To succeed in writing for teens, the message seemed to be, you need to roar, bluster and boom. Lower your voice, and they just can’t hear you.
In a battle for teen attention, conventional wisdom says, there are proven winners. A breakneck pace crosses the finish line first. An edgy plot edges out the others. A strong girl character is a must, but she must kick ass. She must be a bad ass. There’s a lot of focus on girls’ asses. But what about their wits and hearts? A female character can be strong and tender, can’t she? Isn’t history full of them, before Katniss arrived on the scene? For every Joan of Arc, there’s a Rosa Park, described by those who knew her as having a “quiet fortitude;” whose act of rebellion was not slaying a dragon, but refusing to be diminished. Don’t we have room for female characters whose hearts outflex their biceps? Whose power comes from within, not from a weapon or a secret, inherited ‘gift’? Isn’t there space for stories haunt even in the absence of ghosts; that vibrate with emotion, not explosions? Read more here.