Middle Grade?

When I began writing short stories for real in high school, there was no purpose or intent behind it. I just had ideas come and thought they were cool, and writing them into stories felt right. That habit carried into college, and even into the earliest years of my teaching career. Being surrounded by kids for most of the year presented me with constant inspiration for stories to tell about the innocence, trials, and comedies of childhood. Eventually I had enough stories to assemble as a sort of anthology, and made a half-hearted attempt at trying to get them published. Of course that went nowhere since I only knew a fraction of what I needed to about how to do it right.

The next logical step was to write a book. This was terrifying. I hadn’t written any piece of fiction much longer than fifty pages, so just the idea of trying to write an actual book-length manuscript was daunting. And the phrase “trying to write” is used very intentionally here, because I had no idea whether or not this would be something I could even do. It felt like someone with three years of noodling around on a piano deciding one day to sit down and write a symphony. However, over the course of one summer break, mostly between the hours of midnight and three a.m. (back when I was physically able to be awake that late) I managed to write my first book. I felt great pride in the accomplishment, and even greater relief in knowing I could. It wasn’t great but it wasn’t terrible, and it had a few moments I’d probably still be proud of now if I could bring myself to read it. Most importantly, I was able to walk away from the experience knowing I had successfully crossed a new threshold.

That year of summer book writing was followed by a few more. I started feeling more confident and started thinking again that maybe what I was writing was worth trying to publish and it was time to try finding an agent. Through a combination of hard work, patience, and plain dumb luck, I finally broke through and connected with an agent, someone I get along with who understands my writing, always sees how it can be better, and encourages me to do more with it. Right now, while we're on submission with one project and in the middle of preparing another, she’s gently encouraging me to explore a brand new direction. 

I never consciously decided to write middle grade fiction. The stories I thought up were largely inspired by the shenanigans and lives of the kids at school, so those ideas came naturally. Branding is definitely a thing for authors, so if someone is known for writing in a specific genre or age level, typically that’s the wheelhouse where they stay. I don’t remember a lot of details about the first time I spoke with my agent on the phone, but I remember her asking something about middle grade fiction, and if that was the direction I wanted to go for a career. “Because you can write anything you want,” she said, a statement that jumped out at me in a conversation that was jumping out at me as a whole. Did she mean “You’re so talented you would be able to write any kind of book you want”? She’d only read one manuscript that still needed a lot of work, so that didn’t seem likely. Or was it “You don’t have to stay in middle grade if you don’t want to, and I’d be able to represent you in whatever direction you wanted to go”? I hoped her meaning came from a little of each.

She and I have done a lot of work in the past few years, and we’ve had a lot of conversations about writing and publishing in general. Early this year we brainstormed up what hopefully could be a good idea for a middle grade series, for which I’ve drafted two manuscripts in just the past several months. Just as that idea is gaining traction, she’s got me thinking hard about trying something outside of middle grade. That's right: In just the past few weeks, for the first time ever, I'm seriously thinking about trying to write something in mainstream adult fiction.

The problem is I haven’t written anything with an adult perspective in decades, and I have honest questions about whether or not I can do it, at least to any degree of quality. Maybe I’ve settled into children’s literature for so long that I’m solidly entrenched in that lane now. Maybe I’ll try something adult that won’t ring true. For me to even think about trying this feels very much like the apprehension I had some twenty odd years ago, making the leap from writing short stories to trying to write an entire novel. 

Maybe that’s a good sign, though. Scaring myself by wandering into unknown territory could be an opportunity for growth. Having viable projects for middle grade and working on something for adult fiction could be like throwing more than one message in a bottle into the ocean at once, and waiting to see which might be discovered first. 

All of this speculation and overthinking is probably beside the point anyway, since there’s so little I can control about what happens at this stage in whatever kind of writing career I might have. I guess in the end it all has to come back to the writing. That’s really the only part I can control, and it’s the part of the process that’s always been the most fun.