Victoria Collins, author

At risk of coming off as mulitple-personality and basically lost, I’ve abandoned pitching my book as YA and starting identifying as adult.

YA was never my intention. I went that way because an agent told me that’s how they read my MS, and because I hadn’t yet learned agents are human and susceptible to personal points of view, I changed myself to suit them.

Back in June I posted “Where is the line between YA and adult fiction?” (link: http://wp.me/p1AW0D-2C)

Since then I got another, another rejection and with nothing to lose decided to pose the question: “Did you read this MS as YA or adult?”

The response: “A 21 year old main character would not be YA, and I actually read this query as an adult novel. YA novels are those that speak to high school-aged teenagers and offer their perspective. I know “college-aged” protagonists always cause writers grief, but until there’s a new sub-genre of YA, yours would have to be considered adult. It won’t harm your manuscript, by the way. If an agent feels the tone and subject would work better as a YA, then they might ask you to shift the age to 17. But it wouldn’t change the integrity of the writing at all.”

Cool. Phew! I can go back to being who I thought I was. My understanding is also that YA needs to focus on those angsty things that YA age people go through. I love that writing can help with this stuff, but those themes are not the theme of this MS. Am going back to being true to me and the MS (and hope I don’t get asked to rewrite the MC’s age… awkward!)