Young Adults Writing YA

[Megan Duff]

Hello Fellow Nerdfighters!

I am on a bit of a search to find some other young adults (teens and twenties) who also write YA. Its easy to find bloggers and readers but not so much writers. So I think it would supermegafoxyawesomehot to find some fellow YAers who also write YA :)
 We could become friends, form writing groups, find critique partners, the skies the limit!

A little about me: I am a college student from Wisconsin. I turn 20 (eep!) in exactly a month. I am a huge Laini Taylor, Stephanie Perkins, Maureen Johnson, John Green, Patrick Ness fan. I am currently writing a YA contemporary novel with a mystery twist. I am always open to reading/giving my thoughts on other peoples writing.

Drop by and say hello YAers ;D

[Dave Tarragon, NerdFighting Herb]

Well, I suppose my stuff could be called YA. I dunno, I never write for specific classifications :P

[Megan Duff]

That's always cool :) Yeah I always have trouble classifying my stuff too. You boil it down to one or two things and you feel like it gives people the wrong idea of what it is.

My WIP also span 20 years so who knows if anybody else will consider it YA lol

[Dave Tarragon, NerdFighting Herb]

Feel free to check out a sample of my deranged scribbles, if you want :P

http://www.authonomy.com/books/41486/slinker-evasion/

[Megan Duff]

Oohh that looks very interesting :) I'll have to check it out!

Is Authonomy basically self publishing?

[Dave Tarragon, NerdFighting Herb]

Kindof. It's a manuscript hosting site for feedback and every month the top five get reviewed by HarperCollins

[Megan Duff]

Ahhh very cool!

[Taylor Anady]

I think what I'm writing is YA, the characters are certainly around that age. My writing, and I know this isn't a rare phenomenon, always seems to reflect what I'm reading and right now I'm reading Steppenwolf by Herman Hesse, which is a European (German?) classic from like 1929, and The Graveyard Book, which is Kid's Lit written by Neil Gaiman. So, my story is coming out sort of weird. Really dry humor mixed with all sorts of talk about souls and things.

I don't read a lot of YA, I suppose, not "high school fiction" at least, but I do read a lot of books that they should be teaching in High School.

How would you guys define your style? Or, the Young Adult genre itself?

[Megan Duff]

YA to me is anything that's about coming of age. It annoys me that there is so little older YA out there (18 and up). I have yet to consider myself an adult and it may be years yet before I "know who I am". I think there should be more representation of that.

Well I am reading the Chaos Walking Trilogy (again) right now. I guess my WIP reflects it in that my story is gritty, breaks the rules and deals with big issues. I like reading all kinds of things (sci fi, fantasy, paranormal, contemporary, romance, etc) and I look forward to writing a little bit of everything :D

Your WIP sounds very interesting! I hope everything is going well with it!

[Ethel]

Hi! I love the ya genre. I think it's the most fun to write, first off, and I agree with the idea that the genre itself is centered around the "coming of age"storyline. My goal for this summer is to finish my ya fantasy novel... or at least get a chunk of it done. 

I just love the idea of talking about writing in general, in any shape or form. I don't know exactly what kind of replies you expected in this discussion, but I figured I'd just put myself out there if anyone is looking for someone to throw ideas off of or something!

[Megan Duff]

Hey Ethel! I too hope to get a lot of writing done this summer. Is this your first book?

I was just hoping that this would be a place for people to get their feelers out and find each other :D I would love to see some ideas bouncing around, its always so fun to see what others are thinking!

[Amy Zukas]

Technically it's YA but it's not very good so *shrugs*... but it's mostly fantasy so it doesn't really fit into the little niche you have listed up there. But if you wanna see any of it it's on http://figment.com/users/48809-Amy-Zukas 

[Megan Duff]

By niche do you mean YA or how I described my book? Like I said above I'm uncomfortable categorizing my writing :P so don't feel bad if you find a hard time describing yours! And don't sell yourself short either!

Ps I saw that you put Diana Peterfreund as one of your fave authors. Have you read For Darkness Shows the Stars yet???