Why I'd Become a Young-Adult Novelist by Erin

Why I'd Become a Young-Adult Novelist by Erin - June 2014 Scholarship Essay

Writing is a truly under appreciated form of art, so much so that most people do not even see it as such. Works of literature often go undervalued because there is truly no pleasing everyone. If one critic loves your work, another will surely hate it. Becoming a writer is an immensely risky investment, it’s a business move few are quick to make- myself included. If I were to become a writer, I think I’d like to be a young adult novelist, focusing on teenage girls as my main characters. I know, it’s not very original, but it is needed.

People are fast to disassociate Suzanne Collins’ work The Hunger Games or Veronica Roth’s Divergent with feminist works of literature. This is probably due to the horribly ignorant negative connotations of the word “feminism” but that is a topic for another essay, another time. However, getting back to the point, that is a category those books fit into extremely well. Both novels are written by women, about women, for women. They both deal with young women owning their own strength and independence. If I were to write a novel I’d also like to fit into that category as well.

I believe very strongly that it is my duty as a female to uplift other females around me. I’d like to write a novel that does that because I could reach an extremely broad and international fan base. I think it’d be absolutely incredible to empower young girls like me everywhere. I know how inspired I was by The Hunger Games trilogy and Divergent because those books reminded me that while I’m a girl who is routinely shot down because of that, I can still be strong. Those books remind girls, and everybody really, that femininity does not by any means constitute weakness. I’d love to write a book like that.

In conclusion, if I were to write a novel, I’d like to write about a young girl struggling in the face of oppression. I’d like to write about her overcoming and doing far better than her oppressors. She would be flawed, multi-dimensional, and a realistic depiction of a woman. My character would not be perfect by any means, she would make mistakes, just as real young people do. I believe that that is the kind of thing young girls need to read, and I want to be the one to write it.