Well, I believe that I can say quite honestly from my own experience, that YES, ANY teenager who puts the time and care into writing a novel can get a book published. Is it easy? Of course it is not easy.
I am a 15 year old cyber school student who has been working on novel's for nearly 4 years now. I am going to be graduating at 16 years old in 11th grade, and one thing that has been quite useful in submitting college applications and getting acceptance (from Dartmouth, MIT, Washington University: St. Louis, and New Oxford UV) was having that two manuscripts of mine are in the process of being published.
It is VERY POSSIBLE! Whatever you do, NEVER let ANYONE, i do not care who it is, tell you that you don't have the strenght, the maturity, the ability, the knowledge, or the money to do what you want. You can do absolutely anything that you want to do with enough research, knowledge, planning, and hard work. I can give you a few VERY important things about writing a novel. Personally, I have one non-fiction novel, and one fiction novel (both of which will be imprinted into Young Adult and College Level Adult). So I know on both sids of the road what does and does not need to be included in your novel and what steps need to be taken with great pre-caution before, during, and after writing your novel.
One thing that you need to do, that i noticed you have worked on (as a teenager it is helpful)... You don't HAVE to do this, but i found that it had accelerated my writing process about 10 times and took about a year off of the time It took to write my novel. Take the time out to set up a 100 slide powerpoint or a long outline of your novel. Now only do this if you can play out, for the most part your novel in your mind. If you plan on writing it all page for page only knowing the obvious (main character, and setting), do not bother. But if you have an idea of most all the characters, what order you want the story to happen in, and some basic events that you want to include in your novel- create this (powerpoint i find easiest). Act like you are presenting this novel or outline to an editorial agent like you must explain every aspect of the book.
FOR EXAMPLE: My fiction novel is called "Count Your Blessings". My story is set up as the following: 3 Parts of the story: The introduction (which includes preface), the main part of the story (which consists of 27 chapters (each between 15 and 38 pages), and The Prequel (which is a 28th, 29th, and 30th chapter of the story). When normally as a writer should know, the prequel is always a novel that is a second novel (like a sequel) but describes the lives of the characters in the previous novel in a past and before context. But in my novel, there are 4 main characters, but the novel is told from the one girl's POV and the very detailed aspects of her childhood are not revealed during the main context of the novel, so the prequel (which is only 3 chapters) is added to the end of the novel as a seperate part of the novel. So when i made a powerpoint presentation (for only my benefit), i included all of this information. It is extrmely helpful to refer back to during the writing.
So do that, and it will help. Do not start writing until you are at least somewhat decided on your story (unless you wanna spend the next 5 years trying to write a story).
Also, it is important that you save your files to a flashdrive or a disk so that you NEVER lose it. dont second guess a possible technological catastrophe.
Now i could inform you on so many other things, but PLEASE, if you are really interested in this, I know first hand about this, because i am only about 4 months away from getting my fiction novel published, and about 7 months away from getting my non-fiction novel published. Just ask me, and i will give you my email and we can discuss this, and i will aswer any questions you have about the process before, during, and after the writing.
MY NOVEL FOR EVERYONE ELSE:
now, my fiction novel, is on record, that i had it in process before the twilight series even came out, but publishers that i have sent it to have called it (and i must say i was the least favorite fan of mystical stories, and just in the past 2 weeks read all for of the twilight books and am now a big fan of stephanie meyers), but they called my novel "Count Your Blessings", the very realistic version of Twilight. They told me this because they said that it has drama, action, excitement, and casual writing as does Stephanie Meyers novels. It also has a group of main characters (Athena Carter, Ryan Moore, Alison Jamison, and Spencer Ness) and the one character (Athena Carter) is the primary story teller. She tells the entire story from her own point of view. The only thing that it does not have is unrealistic mystical creatures. But it does have some other crazy situations. This story takes place in Southern California (mainly the los angeles area). There will be a definite second novel called "We Call Ourselves Insomnia" (which by the way everyone these titles can not be duplicated or re-represented in any situation that refers to my unpublished novels). There will MOST LIKELY be a third and fourth novel, but it depends on how well the first novel goes through. Look out for this on the new stands in the next year. The publishing agency says i should expect in this spike of Twilight for it to be a hit, but it is never for sure. If anyone has any questions about the story and anything about it i will be more than willing to answer any questions.
Thank you all!
And to Jess-ily-edward, will help you if you need!
-Sierra
-SMvL
