You may look at the title and think to yourself: Wait, I don't even know how to go about submitting to anyone yet and we're already talking about rejection? But here's the thing, you need to be ready for the likely possibility that out of the number of literary agents and publishing companies you send your young adult novel to there will be a rejection, or many rejections. Being ready for rejection is a key element in trying to get published; you have to be able to move past it. If your rejection comes with notes attached, read them, they are there to help your story eventually fit the market. Whether you receive a note or not, keep writing and try again.
Stephen King began writing since the first grade and as a preteen he had already begun sending works he had written to an Alfred Hitchcock's Mystery Magazine. He says in his memoir, On Writing, "By the time I was fourteen... the nail in my wall would no longer support the weight of the rejection slips impaled upon it. I replaced the nail with a spike and went on writing" (King, 2000, p. 41). This quote is not meant to discourage you, especially if you were not writing by the time you could write. What is important, however, is that even the great writer himself received rejections and didn't let them stop him from writing. If you have that gut feeling, that urge to write, don't let rejection stop you. Be prepared to learn from it.
Works Referenced:
- King, Stephen. (2000). On Writing: A memoir of the craft. New York: Scribner.
The literary agents, book editors, and reviewers of today's market will be the ones that ultimately determine your fate as a writer and potential author. Becoming a good writer or learning how to write a young adult (YA) novel, with its list of do's, don'ts, and tricks of the trade would unfortunately require a whole other kind of blog to even be worth the lesson. This blog begins with the idea that you have found your way through the creative obstacles that has every writer struggling at one point or another, believing you have completed a YA novel, and now just need to know where to go from there. The answer lies in finding the right sources.
A great place to look first is at the YA authors you admire already. Acknowledgements at the front or back of your favorite novel are usually loaded with honorable mention of those that have helped them get published. For example, at the back of Stephanie Meyer's Twilight, her acknowledgment gives thanks to her literary agent Jodi Reamer and her editor Megan Tingley, of Megan Tingley Books by Little, Brown and Company (Meyer, 2005, p. 501). Though this search option may take more time to build a list of contacts it is credible by the success the book it is printed on, and it is free. You can also look for this same kind of list is the author's website, and/or social media sites; see who they are following.
Another way to find agents and editors to send your work to, if your willing to spend the money, is through the resources of sites like Writer's Digest. Under the site's Resources sub-header there is access to Agent Listings and Publisher Market Listings that, with subscription to the Writers Market, can be very beneficial in quickly finding the right contacts. These sites, as well as the many others on the web like it, are filled with articles and blogs that can assist you in finding the right sources for you.
Works Referenced:
- Meyer, S. (2005). Twilight. New York: Little, Brown and Company
The life of an aspiring young adult (YA) writer is always full of the unknown. Is my work good enough? If it is, where do I go from there? Could I make it as a YA author? Then the biggest question, Is there a good market in young adult literature? Though the answers can be different for each individual with regard to many of these types of questions, there is one that is the same for everyone. Young adult literature (YAL) has been rapidly growing in recent decades. YAL books, written mainly for preteens and teenagers (but by no means age limited), have become a big part of pop-culture (Reno, 2008).
Within the past decade there has been an
increase in creative writing graduates seeking their place in the world
as great authors, especially now in YAL (Campbell, 2006, p. 65). Both Creative Writing MFA graduates as well as writers with no post-secondary educational experience in the field are becoming successful YA authors in today's market. Because the YAL market seems so daunting and uncertain, due to the difficulty in finding easily accessible information about the market, many of these aspiring YA writers worry about whether they should follow their dream and try to get their work published.
This blog will provide helpful market information, references to scholarly articles and writing magazines, interviews with people in various roles of the industry, and real stories from successful YA authors in hopes of resolving some of the insecurities aspiring YA writers have about the possibility of working in the market where their greatest passion lies.
Works Referenced:
