Writing Between Worlds: On the Differences Between Litfic and YA
Hi, this is me, taking a moment out of my busy day packing to comment on the latest controversy in the young adult community.
Grady Hendrix and Katie Crouch have done something unique even in the world of blogging in this slate.com article, which is to disparage the worlds of commercial and literary writing in one breath. I doubt this was their intention, but take a look at this paragraph:
Katie, having come out of an M.F.A. background where the rule was that good writing requires rumination, pain, and the slow loss of your best years, fought the craziness at first. But readers in Y.A. don’t care about rumination. They don’t want you to pore over your sentences trying to find the perfect turn of phrase that evokes the exact color of the shag carpeting in your living room when your dad walked out on your mom one autumn afternoon in 1973. They want you to tell a story. In Y.A. you write two or three drafts of a chapter, not eight. When kids like one book, they want the next one. Now. You need to deliver.
So, see, they’re implying that readers of young adult literature don’t care about quality of prose. But they’re also implying that, LOL, literary writing is this sort of overwrought practice where you focus on trifling matters to the detriment of the story.
People are getting all up in a tweet about this, sending Ms. Crouch suggestions for lit-styled YA. That’s not a wrong-headed idea, because I’d say that this article shows a certain ignorance about the many writers who do care about quality of prose. Like my buddy Kirsten Hubbard, or Patrick Ness, or Meg Rosoff, all of whom, I’m sure, are quite capable of crafting a transcendent description of the Berber in their parents’ dens.
But I think there’s an interesting discussion to be had here, one buried beneath the breezy tone. Namely, there are differences between approaches to writing in the young adult and MFA writing worlds. I know, because I was once an MFA student, too, and now write for teens.
- Length of time expected to produce a book – In my graduate program, writers were expected to produce one hundred and twenty pages (a novella, incomplete novel, or several short stories) over two years. In the young adult writing world, book contracts dictate that writers produce roughly one book a year. In the MFA world, if a book isn’t working, you’re expected to revise it until it does—for years, maybe. In the YA world, if a book isn’t working, you’re expected to write another.
- Focus on the economics of the writing life—Most young adult writers I know (myself included) are aiming for the golden ring of “being a full time writer.” That means that you are contracted to write enough books, and are bringing in enough royalties from your backlist that you don’t need to do anything else to pay a living wage. In contrast, most of my cohort from my MFA program has focused their career life on teaching, taking on adjunct positions in the hopes that they might one day get a tenure track job that will let them teach creative writing classes, write, and take sabbaticals every few years for research purposes. This lifestyle, it’s hoped, is financially supportive enough that writers can take their time to produce books of high quality.
These are very real, practical differences between these two writing worlds, and of course they result in a variety of differences in actual books. For even those writers of impeccable prose ability in YA, there’s likely some focus on producing books that they’re sure will sell. Intrinsically, they have to consider the needs of their audience in order to earn a living.
In the literary world, these audience needs are largely considered secondary. Esteem is important; thematics are important; depth is important. But I’ve seen the primacy of audience demands within commercial writing dismissed. The writer is considered the authority, above and beyond the reader.
I think both models have their problems.
In the young adult world, it’s not unusual to meet writers who have been incredibly taxed by deadlines, absolutely exhausted by the demand that they produce and produce and produce after their first book sells. There’s a lot of insecurity around writing “fast enough.” Some authors draft in weeks, revise in a few small handfuls of months, and while I envy this, I’d be lying if I said I haven’t encountered a few books that felt rushed. The inevitable sophomore slump of trilogies—when the second book in a series is subpar because it was the first produced under a deadline after the writer might have taken years to polish the first—is a side-effect. Crouch and Hendrix are wrong that readers don’t notice these things. Teenagers are astute. A casual perusal of goodreads should have disabused them of any notion otherwise. The truth is, even commercial art takes some time to do well, and writers deserve the space to do their books justice without running themselves absolutely ragged.
Meanwhile, because of a flooded job market, not to mention the state of academia today (hint: it’s pretty terrible), MFA students of my generation are likely to have to work longer and harder to actually get that tenure track job, and they’re likely to be poorer while they’re working toward that goal. Years of compromised income (have you ever looked at a TA stipend? You might need a magnifying glass) and sometimes onerous debt load leaves many MFA graduates vulnerable to the James Freys of the world, who will promise some money—any money, very very little money—for any monkey who can write reasonably well. And because these students are desperate and no one’s told them why this is a bad idea, they take them up on these offers! I think that MFA programs are absolutely obligated to protect their students from sharks like Frey, and the way to do that is to begin talking about the financials of writing. Book contracts. Query letters. Agents. The truth is, the ability to write without ever caring about income from their words is a luxury that many students don’t have today. It’s time that MFA programs begin embracing Yog’s Law, an adage that’s been repeated in sci-fi circles for years: money flows toward the writer.
Neither the world of academic writing or the world of commercial writing is absolutely flawed—both have their strengths too, of course, be it beautiful prose or meaningful messages or addictive stories or entertaining ideas or passionate readerships. But, buried beneath a sea of condescension, I think Crouch and Hendrix are onto something: these are very different conceptions of the writer’s life, and I think most truly successful writers will ultimately have to craft a career that’s actually a bit of both.
Phoebe
Phoebe is a 20-something writer who lives in New York State with her husband and cat. She is a dork, not a geek or a nerd.
Her debut novel, Starglass, will be released from Simon and Schuster Books for Young Readers in Summer 2013.
14 comments
" I think that MFA programs are absolutely obligated to protect their students from sharks like Frey, and the way to do that is to begin talking about the financials of writing. Book contracts. Query letters. Agents."
Here, here! I'm an MFA student now, and I've been in the rare position of getting an agent and published while still in school. All along the way I kept asking why I wasn't learning about these things. I fiercely love my school, but focusing on craft alone isn't enough. Though I should say that my school is trying to make efforts in these areas more recently.
Oh good, I'm glad they are! I honestly thing the Frey incident shocked a lot of MFA programs into action (I mean, Columbia invited him to speak. It's horrific, really), which is awesome. There's no reason why MFA students shouldn't be learning how to read book contracts, for instance, as part of their education–and no reason why that would detract from lessons on craft.
Amazing post, Phoebe. It's invaluable to get opinions from people that have straddled both worlds to get a balanced idea of how the styles of writing, and lifestyles, are different. That view gives perspective, rather than taking one side or the other and further entrenching this Commercial Versus Literary battle. The reality is of course nuanced, and I love te nuggets you have in here for how both sides can learn and improve from understanding the other.
Thanks so much, Sarah! I think that when it comes down to it, as much as the differences are highlighted even by those within the community, we're all writers and are, or should be, working toward the same goal–sustainable living, that sort of thing.
I really love your 'MFA perspective' posts. It's sort of fascinating to me that there are tons of very talented writers who choose a completely different route to the one I've been taking…actually, it's fascinating that those different 'routes' exist in the first place.
In other words, more MFA posts please
What everyone else said.
Really, what the article puts forward their lack of comfort with writing for teens. Well, to be SEEN as writing for teens, and how that falls so far from the heights they put themselves on when writing purely literary fiction.
Of course, Crouch's first novel wasn't strictly literary fiction. It fact, it was marketed as chick lit. It's actually a really good read, and I can see how her voice would aim well towards YA, though I have to say the way she described the books puts them pretty low on my to-read list.
Yeah, definitely. I think it was utterly transparent that she's not really comfortable or happy writing for this age group. As much as one can sell out one's own preferences for that sort of thing, inevitably it seems like a bad idea.
'The inevitable sophomore slump of trilogies—when the second book in a series is subpar because it was the first produced under a deadline after the writer might have taken years to polish the first—is a side-effect.' Interesting idea, but I'm wondering if you theory can encompass third books. I would have guessed third books would also be written under a tight deadline and they're very often much better than the middle book – what do you say?
I'd say the third books are often better because, by that time, the writer has learned to work to a deadline. In the sink or swim situation they've been put in, they swim.
Or they sink and breach their contract.
I've seen trilogy-writing authors say that the middle book is so difficult because it has to tie up loose ends from the first, but keep things open for the third. That kind of balancing act is understandably hard to pull off, with the result that the second book can easily end up having odd pacing or jarring leaps into new plotlines. The third book 'merely' has to finish everything off, so it doesn't have the same problem.
I had a mostly LOLWHAT reaction to that article because it was just so… silly. But I do think there's a divide between genre writers (not just YA, but many genres) and literary writing. Genre writers as a whole seem to be tossed into the machine of cranking out book after book after book with little thought given to the amount of time it takes individual writers to craft a novel, while literary writers are expected to toil over their craft for years and then maybe get some accolades and a few sales. Neither situation sounds especially ideal.
Exactly my point, Steph. There's this attitude that writers need to be pushed to one extreme or another when neither is the best way to produce solid work.
Ah, Phoebe, you've hit upon my current bit of angst. I just finally got my first book revised and accepted and cleared for publication. I'm under contract for TWO books, however. And everywhere you turn on Goodreads, you see, "I can't believe this author took two years between books! That's outrageous! I can't remember why I should care about these characters and I'm dropping this series!"
My first book took eight years to write. I really, really don't like the math on this one.
I think that if Robert Jordan can die and have people still read his books, then you'll be just fine!