That in itself isn't altogether monumental. I go to the bookstore a lot. As much as I love to read, my college education, with its pesky homework, has put a damper on my ability to read for pleasure. I think I read maybe two books for pleasure this past semester (Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows and Paper Towns by John Green), so I wanted to take a look at some of the books I might have missed in the mean time.
While I was there, I was thinking about Seafear. I do this a lot, but I was really thinking about it as I made my customary sweep through the Young Adult section. I passed by so many books that all seemed to be about the same thing -- plain as paper protagonist, exceptionally alluring member of the opposite sex, something "dangerous" happens to the two of them, only their
And I thought, My book is nothing like this.
I thought about the advice I'd gotten from literary agents who were kind enough to give me personalized responses to Seafear. They all mostly said the same thing: I really like this book, but it doesn't quite fit in YA. It fits in with middle grade novels.
So I decided to hit up the MG section, which I don't do often enough. A lot of the books I've really loved have been middle grade -- Narnia, The Prydain Chronicles, His Dark Materials. I pulled a few of the books off the shelves and looked at their jacket flap descriptions. I specifically looked at fantasy, since that's what Seafear is. Like in YA, I noticed some recurring themes: adventure, reliance on plot, magic, and the like.
And I thought, That's exactly like Seafear.
So I'm going to try something different. I'm going to edit Seafear, but I'm going to make it more appropriate for middle grade than young adult. There are superficial changes that need to be made -- Matthias is 17 in the first draft, he'll have to be, at the most, 14 in this new one. A major plot point involves him going off to college, but that's easy enough to change to boarding school with a few tweaks.
More importantly, this gives me the much-needed opportunity to tighten some parts of Seafear up that I noticed were lacking and address some continuity issues with Stormsong. There are characters I need to cut, references I need to change, people I need to mention. I'm fortunate in that my sequel was written before the first book was published. My story is not yet set in stone.
So over the next few weeks, or months, or however long it takes me to recalibrate my 82,000-word long novel while simultaneously taking 17 credits in a rigorous public policy program and directing a one-act play (probably "Welcome to the Moon" by John Patrick Shanley) and applying for jobs that pay me money, I'll be trying to make Seafear a middle grade novel. It's a big decision, but it feels like the right one for me and for my book.
