Writers' Inklings

  I had a wonderful time spending the night at a friend and fellow writers house. Lauren is a young adult writer like me and she writes historical fiction. Her current project is a book about the years after the civil war. She was also one of my beta readers for my current WIP (work in progress) before I sent it off to my editor.

  Lauren and I spoke long into the night about writing in our genres, how to get an agent, the pros and cons of self publishing, and just all around books and book stuff.

  We came upon the topic of what is popular to read today for young adults or YA fiction. We expressed our frustration that EVERY book now is about a girl with a perfect boyfriend whom she can not live without. For example The Fault in Our Stars, The City of series, Divergent, If I Stay and so on. Now most of these are great books, and I am not trying to diss them but what happened to being equal? What happened to breaking away from stereotypes? And what about all those girls without boyfriends, which is a large part of the population including myself and Lauren?

  I said, "Why can't there be a book about a girl who is awesome and saves her world without the help of a man?" Honestly, I had been wondering this for some time. And here are the reasons why:

  Not every girl has a perfect boyfriend. And those that do happen to find somebody often have a far from perfect relationship.

  Needing/having a boyfriend often makes up a large portion of the plot that is not really necessary. Now, I often think romance adds a fun element to just about any story, and I love to read about it, but does it have to be in every YA novel? No.

  The girl is often so attached to "her man" that she misses out on life, and cues that seriously could have helped her save her world faster and cleaner.

  I am not a man hater, but really, I am done with the romance being the focus of all of these girl's lives. I want to read a book about a girl who doesn't have and doesn't get a boyfriend. So I am gonna write one.

  Since this idea has come to me I have talked to more of my friend who all agree that today's books just go over the top with the whole romance thing (and some of them have/had boyfriends). So I don't know when, and I don't know how, but I am gonna write this YA no romance novel.

  And it is going to be epic.