![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
One Bite at a Time
Jul. 21st, 2008 02:16 pmI was recently reminded of the old saying, "How do you eat an elephant?" (The answer, of course, is my subject line.) It made me think about how I could approach working on the novel, somehow dividing it into small deadlines rather than giving myself a final deadline that comes and goes without anyone noticing it. I'm still pondering this, but think it's probably a good idea, if I can figure it out.
On a completely different line of thought, I read an article in the New York Times Book Review in which some teen authors declared no adults would read teen novels. This, to me, seems silly and not terribly true, if only because I'm clearly someone who does. Most of the people I've told to read "Percy Jackson" are adults; almost all of the people I've discussed "Percy" with are adults. The Twilight series is extremely boundary crossing in that way, according to the magazine articles that have declared Edward to be the new Mr. Darcy. (I can't link to that one, as I can't remember where I read it.) I think the idea that adults aren't reading YA is becoming less and less true as the teens who grew up reading YA novels become adults. I'm cuspy on that--we had a great YA section at my public library growing up, but it was before the YA boom. But I remember where the good stuff is kept, so to speak, and regularly check out books from both the children's section and the YA room--moreso than I read adult novels and definitely more than I read non-fiction.
I'm wondering if the stigma against YA books is more prevalent outside of the SFF genres. It seems to me, particularly since a lot of the shared-world genre fiction is often considered YA in libraries, even if it really isn't, that maybe the genre readers understand the whole age category thing in a different way. Even if the YA genre is more important (and I've read some compelling arguments that YA is a genre to itself rather than an age category, although I don't think the label is always used appropriately), the fantasy genre feel might bridge gaps for fantasy-readers. I don't know if I think it's true, but I suspect it bears pondering, and I'd love to hear what others think on the topic.
On a completely different line of thought, I read an article in the New York Times Book Review in which some teen authors declared no adults would read teen novels. This, to me, seems silly and not terribly true, if only because I'm clearly someone who does. Most of the people I've told to read "Percy Jackson" are adults; almost all of the people I've discussed "Percy" with are adults. The Twilight series is extremely boundary crossing in that way, according to the magazine articles that have declared Edward to be the new Mr. Darcy. (I can't link to that one, as I can't remember where I read it.) I think the idea that adults aren't reading YA is becoming less and less true as the teens who grew up reading YA novels become adults. I'm cuspy on that--we had a great YA section at my public library growing up, but it was before the YA boom. But I remember where the good stuff is kept, so to speak, and regularly check out books from both the children's section and the YA room--moreso than I read adult novels and definitely more than I read non-fiction.
I'm wondering if the stigma against YA books is more prevalent outside of the SFF genres. It seems to me, particularly since a lot of the shared-world genre fiction is often considered YA in libraries, even if it really isn't, that maybe the genre readers understand the whole age category thing in a different way. Even if the YA genre is more important (and I've read some compelling arguments that YA is a genre to itself rather than an age category, although I don't think the label is always used appropriately), the fantasy genre feel might bridge gaps for fantasy-readers. I don't know if I think it's true, but I suspect it bears pondering, and I'd love to hear what others think on the topic.
