Coming of What Age?

Genre is a complicated topic for many writers. If you’re not writing straight romance, science fiction, or crime/mystery, how do you “define” what your book is about? What if you’ve written a sci-fi romance? Or is it romance sci-fi? On which bookstore shelf do you want to see this book? Beyond the external genre, which may be obvious on first glance at the cover, what about the evolution that is going on inside the main character’s head, i.e. the internal genre? Is the story externally a cowboy Western where the character internally is seeking independence and freedom? Or is the main character striving to achieve something? Like massive wealth as in Wall Street or physical achievement like Nyad or musical achievement like Whiplash? On which bookshelves does the bookseller place achievement stories? Can you call your work a mashup of two or more genres and still attract interest from an agent or publisher? The questions and answers could fill many a blog post. I listened to a podcast recently where the editor-book coach-podcaster (triple genred?) described five different dimensions of genre. Further commentary on that will have to wait for other, longer blog posts. For now I’d like to focus on one genre.

I’ve been working on a novel I personally think of as a “coming-of-age” story. I hope this is a marketable genre. It’s based on a period in my own life when I was going through major change and faced with formative decisions about what my adult life would look like. I was faced with a major door number one or door number two decision, not both. The problem: I was not just graduating from university — I was in my upper twenties. I have no interest in turning the book into a story about a teenager or a student. I really just didn’t think the plot line would work for a younger person. It’s an adult story, and I think a universal one. But then is it the coming-of-age genre?

I find coming-of-age to be an interesting phrase in the English language. In Spanish, Google translates this as, “mayoridad” — 18 in both the U.S. and Spain? A quick internet search defines coming-of-age as an age range, e.g. 16-21, or as the cusp between childhood and adulthood. Coming-of-age ceremonies in Judaism, i.e. the bar or bat mitzvah, happen at 12 or 13 years old (also, why English, why “years old” and not “years young”, or just “years”?). Other religions and cultures have ceremonies at this age, or even younger (Malaysia’s Khatam Al Koran or Brazil’s Sateré-Mawé tribe), some at 16 (the Amish) or at 20 (Japan). OK, your hormones may change at puberty, but does that really mark the transition to adulthood? Maybe when the average age of humans was 30.

But it needs some updating. Menstruation and adolescent hormones aside, the human brain continues to develop until age 25. The prefrontal cortex, which controls decision-making and problem-solving, develops last. Relative to my novel in progress, I’m not sure I was functioning as an adult before my upper 20s, even with a freshly-honed PFC. Heck, I’m not sure some of the decisions made in my 30s or 40s were adult. I’d like to write about some of them in the future, and perhaps would still call them a coming-of-age story.

I searched the internet for “coming-of-age stories” and found among the most beloved ones titles you would expect, like Little Women (the main characters were 12-16), Catcher in the Rye, (age 16-17), etc. Then I searched for “coming-of-age for 20s and 30s” and found some more contemporary titles about people, mostly in their 20s, many deciding on marriage and children – a very big door number one or door number two choice. Maybe there is a market for my aforementioned novel. Next, I searched the internet for “coming-of-age stories for 40s and 50s” and found a few, not many. I’ve had plenty of coming-of-age, or formative moments, or significant turning points in mid-life. Some I’d still like to write about. I’d like to read about others and their turning point moments in mid-life or later. Years ago, I read Tales of a Female Nomad, in which the author gets divorced and gets on various planes by herself, deciding she wants a different type of life than the one she was living. People at any age make major changes in their lives, whether as a result of external events or internal desires, or both. Personally, I know some of these people. I’d like to see more of that — perhaps this is an unmet market need. Next I searched “coming-of-age stories for 60s”. Nothing came up. I’d like to read some of these too, as I’d like to see what life choices may lie ahead for people in their 60s or even 70s “coming-of-age” then, either for the first time or for the umpteenth time.