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A lot of the conversation about young adult lit these days seem to focus on rules for what you as an artist (sorry--gonna use the a word throughout this post) are allowed to do.

You are not allowed to write characters who do not share your race, ethnicity, sexual orientation, skin tone, and Meyers-Briggs Personality Type.

JK, actually you are allowed to write characters who are not you, but you must immerse yourself in VERY SERIOUS RESEARCH first.

Unless you are writing a character not like you who is not wholly and inarguably good. Then your work is problematic.

JK, your inability to write a complex, multifaceted character who is not like you shows that you should pretty much only write characters who are you.

Oh, and by the way, you must be very careful about what "messages" your art is conveying because THINK OF THE CHILDREN!

The hell with all this. Let me tell you something about art:

There are no rules.

Anybody telling you what you must or must not do in your art is inherently wrong.  Do whatever you want. 

Even if your art is aimed at young people. Maybe especially if your art is aimed at young people.  You do not have a responsibility to be didactic or morally correct in your art for young people. Young people live with ambiguity all the time. They can handle it.  By the time you're a teenager, you've already noticed that bad people frequently prosper, that good people do bad things, that love is complicated, that hate is complicated, and that people are complicated. You know people who have done terrible things. You know people who have had terrible things done to them. 

And, you have a very good bullshit detector. So you don't require art that tells you how the world is supposed to be in order to shape your delicate mind.  Art that tells you how things should be rather than how they are can be comforting, and so go for it. But you also deserve art that reflects the world in all of its messy horror and glory. 

When I was young, there was a big anti-art push from the right. Google Robert Mapplethorpe, Andres Serrano, Karen Finley, or W.A.S.P. if you don't know what I'm talking about.

Now, the anti-art forces are also coming from the left.

But here's the thing: the urge to dictate terms to art is a totalitarian impulse, and it sucks wherever it comes from. Art requires you to think for yourself. People who want to regulate art through actual lawmaking or through the internet shame patrol are fundamentally against you thinking for yourself.

Regular readers, both of them, know I am an advocate of real criticism; if something sucks, say it. After you've read it. That is your right, and, I would argue, your responsibility as a reader.

But you don't get to tell artists what's permissible. You don't get to make rules for what artists get to do or for which artists get to do what. 

One reason art matters so much to so many of us is that making or consuming art is one of the only times we can really feel free. Don't let anybody take that from you. There are no rules.