Whenever someone tells me they write young adult (often shortened to YA), my first response is always, "That's nice. So what genre do you write?" More often than not, I get a blank stare in response. The look in their eyes says it all.
"I just told you. I write YA."
At this point, I normally chuckle. "So you write fantasy." Most of those I meet who have made this young-adult-classification mistake write fantasy of some flavour, commonly urban fantasy.
However, sometimes I'll get that affronted look. "No. I write YA." To this, I bow my head in shame.
The confusion between genre and category is something that plagues every new writer. We're told that we have to categorise this piece of work that we have spent months, if not years, working on, but we don't want to fit into a box; we want to be in a circle. So… the question is, what does young adult really mean?
