October 2023: Revision Reflections
On Writing My First Middle Grade Novel: How We Choose What We Write
Recently, I sent my first serious attempt at a middle grade (MG) novel to my agent. (Working title: The Ghosts of Dead Horse Island.) Though I wrote a couple of starter MGs years ago that will never see the light of day, this is the first time I set out to complete a salable manuscript in what the publishing industry generally defines as the Middle Grade Category (ages 8-12). The idea for the book originated as a short story I intended to write as a sample in a MG ghost story anthology proposal. But I quickly realized it was too large in scope for a 5000 word short, so I wrote something else for that proposal and have spent most of 2023 working on this novel.
To be honest, until quite recently, I never imagined myself as a MG writer. While in the past my work has tended to be explicitly categorized for either adults or young adults (YA), to me most of what I write falls into that liminal space between YA and adult fiction loosely referred to as crossover. I say loosely, because crossover fiction as a distinct category in publishing doesn’t actually exist.* Once you get an agent and start trying to sell your books to editors, you quickly discover that the boundaries between age categories, at least as far as publishing is concerned, are about as liminal as a brick wall. The industry loves its boxes and loves to sort books and readers into them. Whole imprints exist within larger publishing houses to facilitate this sorting, with distinct editorial, marketing, and publicity teams that might as well live on different planets for all the interaction they seem to have with one another. These barriers extend out into the wider ecosystem of books, where they impact how much books cost (and the royalties their authors earn), where they are marketed and shelved, what publications will review them, what awards they are eligible to receive, etc. And those are just the barriers that divide age categories. There’s a whole other set of divisions within age categories to sort books by their genre (literary fiction, speculative, romance, etc.) and form (poetry, short fiction, novels-in-verse, etc.).
The upshot of all of this for somebody like me has been to figure out ways to try to fit myself and my writing into these boxes in order to have a publishing career. I won’t lie: It hasn’t been easy. My work tends to be too mature in subject matter (i.e., uncomfortably queer) to be published as YA, and too adolescent in voice and POV to sit easily within adult fiction. Perhaps that’s why I’ve had the most success thus far publishing short stories, which are less rigidly bound by age category. But as much as I love short fiction, I want to publish novels.
Hence, my turn to middle grade.
This is where things start to get messy (and why I’m writing this essay). In kid lit, we tend to talk about writing for children as if it’s a calling from a higher power. Having a high-minded and noble mission is seemingly a fundamental job requirement. Ask any children’s writer why they write for kids, and they will tell you it’s to write the books they needed but didn’t have access to as a child. We say we want to give voice to the voiceless, or to educate and create empathy, or to provide windows and mirrors for kids who have not traditionally been represented in books, etc.
But if you spend as much time as I do in kid lit circles, these mission statements start to sound a little rehearsed and dare I say perfunctory. That’s not to imply folks aren’t being 100% sincere in their convictions. Nor am I suggesting that I myself don’t have my own mission to pursue. (There’s a reason that despite age category, form, or genre, I always write about queer kids grappling with the complexities and pitfalls of queer identities in our homophobic society.) But I do think it’s worth reflecting on the fact that writers of adult fiction are never expected to spout similarly high-minded justifications for why they choose to write for adults. To me, there’s always been something a tad defensive about the answers children’s writers give to the question Why do you write for kids? It’s as if simply saying “It’s what I enjoy doing” or “It’s where I’ve had the most success publishing my work” weren’t perfectly valid and sufficient reasons. Indeed, I think most kid lit writers have a deeply ingrained inferiority complex when it comes to this question because, let’s face it, most people think we write for kids because we’re not good enough to write for adults. After all, that’s the underlying assumption of the question itself, isn’t it? There must be a reason you write for children, otherwise you’d be writing for grown ups.
Well, my reasons for writing this MG novel are pretty simple:
I don’t enjoy writing about grown ups. Even my forays into adult fiction have largely centered on young protagonists because I find adults boring and unpleasant. I’m sure there are deep and complex psychological reasons for this — none of which I intend to unpack here. But especially nowadays, in our increasingly bleak and cruel society, I find it preferable to spend my writing time inside the heads of young people, who are still capable of experiencing the world with hope, joy, kindness, sincerity, and wonder despite the ugliness that surrounds them.
I’ve tried the adult and YA route and wanted to see if I could have more luck publishing a MG novel. Yes, this is a purely careerist motivation. I’m not ashamed to admit that. I’ve spent the better part of the past two decades slowly building my writing career. I want to have more to show for it than I do now. Short stories are wonderful and have given me so much. But to be taken seriously as a writer in kid lit, you really need to publish novels.
Writing a MG at this moment in my career seemed like a wiser investment of my time. I’m a relatively slow writer. Given the shorter word count and generally more straightforward narrative structure of a typical MG novel, I figured I could complete this book more quickly than a typical YA or adult project. Those can take me years to write. In contrast, I finished a polished draft of this manuscript in months.
Finally, and most importantly, I had lots of things I wanted to say to kids with this book. The story deals with themes that I care deeply about, including: the impact of addiction on a family; the possibility of recovery and redemption; the pain of being the quiet child whose needs are ignored; the guilt and fear of causing harm to those you love most; and the suffering inflicted on kids by the rise of transphobia and homophobia in our toxic politics. Plus, there are ghost horses! A magical island! Friendship, adventure, and family healing! (It’s pretty amazing what you can accomplish with a middle grade novel. It makes you wonder why on earth kid lit writers feel so insecure…)
All of this is to say that I have many and varied reasons why I wrote this particular book right now. Some are high-minded and noble. Some are personal. Some are practical. Some are purely careerist. Why we write what we write (and for whom) is never as simple a decision as it may appear on the surface. Most writers I know have countless story ideas floating around in their heads, any of which they could reasonably develop into their next big project. But choosing which one(s) to invest their time and emotional resources into writing is a big part of building a career as an author, and it’s something we don’t talk about much. Once the book hits the shelves and we’re out doing our promotion and answering questions about why we wrote this particular story, it’s easy and natural and obvious to simply revert to our high-minded boilerplate: I wrote this because it was the book I needed and didn’t have as a child.
While that may be true, it’s likely equally true that we wrote it because our agent thought it was a good idea that would sell quickly, or we wanted to break out of our genre/age category rut and try something new, or we felt pressure from our publisher to write something more commercial, or our last book was a flop and this seemed like a safer bet, or, or, or…
Almost every writer I know has aspirations of crossing the barriers of age category/genre/form that publishing imposes on us. Sometimes we can’t because we’ve had so much success in one box that the pressure to keep churning out more books in that market segment is too great to overcome. Sometimes we have no choice but to leapfrog from box to box hoping to find a lasting audience. But the point is that probably every book that’s ever been published has at least some of these practical, grubby, careerist decisions to thank for its existence — even if their authors choose to only focus on their most noble aspirations when discussing why they wrote them.
If I don’t care, why would a reader?
Anyway. Was it a wise career move for me to write a MG novel that features major secondary characters that include a bi-racial trans boy and a guncle who’s a recovering alcoholic in a political environment where books get banned simply because their author’s last name happens to be “Gay”? Who knows? This is where the crassly commercial considerations of publishing run headlong into our high-minded goals as creative artists. At the end of the day, no matter how much I might want to publish a bestseller, I can only write what’s in my heart and soul. To spend months and years of my life with characters and a story means I have to love them desperately and believe deep down to my marrow in the message they are trying to convey. I have to care. If I don’t care, why would a reader? And this is the struggle that all writers face: Aligning our creative ambitions with the commercial demands of the market and the changing tastes and interests of readers. Each new book is a gamble that we’ll hit that sweet spot where all three converge. Most of the time we fail. But occasionally, if we’re very lucky, we strike the bullseye.
Here’s hoping that The Ghosts of Dead Horse Island strikes the bullseye for me!
In community,
Rob
* I can hear some of you protest, “What about New Adult?” But that has yet to be embraced by the industry as a viable category and still offers few publishing pathways for writers like me. But maybe someday…
Don’t miss our next Zoomie, this time hosted by Jennifer Richard Jacobson:
To Tell, Or Not To Tell
Suspense delights readers. As do major plot twists and reversals. However, knowing when to withhold information and when to reveal, can be like walking a tightrope while carrying a squirmy octopus. Provide too much information (or too much teasing), and the story loses narrative drive. Provide too little information and readers can end up feeling frustrated or duped. In this Zoomie we’ll explore ways of achieving maximum tension without teasing or deceiving.
Reserve your spot now on our Eventbrite page.
We’re also busy reading and thinking about our next selection for The Writers’ Book Club: The Firefly Letters: A Suffragette's Journey to Cuba, by Margarita Engle. Next week we’ll be sending out discussion questions for our talk. But in the meantime, reserve your spot via our Eventbrite page!
Thank you, Rob, for this honest and beautiful reflection.