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QUESTIONS FROM READERS
Dude, are you gay?
Some readers phrase this question delicately: “I notice how you mention
your partner and stuff. Are you lesbian? It won’t affect anything. I’m just
curious.” Yes, I am gay and/or lesbian. (Does that make me twice as queer?)
“When did I know?” you ask. The moment I fell in love with a girl. I think I
always knew; just never acknowledged it. It’s been a journey. You know how
arduous the journey is if you’re going through your own coming out process.
Today, I’m out and proud and I still love that girl. (We’ve been together
thirty + years. I wish I could say we met in kindergarten J.)
When are you going to write a sequel to Keeping You a Secret, Luna,
Define “
Rashelle wrote: “I love this book [Define “
Readers, I’ll leave that to your imaginations. Wait for my next
book. I promise it’ll be exciting, surprising, original, gritty, and
stylistically familiar. There are so many incredible, wonderful, extraordinary
books out there to read, I hope your enthusiasm for my work will encourage you
to search out great books by other authors.
Where do you get your ideas for books?
I wish I had a supplier. Some shady character I’d hook up with
in the dead of night. Slick, that’d be his name. Or Jimmy. His beady eyes would
dart around as he slipped an envelope out of his trenchcoat and snuck it to me
in exchange for… what? Not money. Ideas are a dime a dozen. Where would I find
time to work on a dozen ideas?
The mystery surrounding ideas is, I think, how they’re turned
into stories. Good question. The answer is, I have no idea.
Ideas come from everywhere. They come
out of nowhere. They arrive — thud — in your brain. All of a sudden you wonder
why you’re obsessing about those smelly old sneakers you wore to death when you
were nine. How, despite your mother’s advice, you insisted on wearing shoes
without socks. You wore them until they were holey and shredded and
dirt-streaked and grass-stained and SMELLY. The reek of stinky feet is one
memorable odor.
You remember you’ve been wanting to write a story about
cheating. You know that cheating is a moral issue kids have to deal with almost
daily. Not only kids. Are there enough crooks in accounting firms and on
congressional committees? Geesh. Cheating is an issue. Everybody cheats, don’t
they? There’s a fine line between cheating and recognizing opportunities when
they present themselves. Isn’t there? I mean, how often have we justified cheating
by calling it “creative interpretation of the rules?” Or the law.
Out of nowhere this kid appears in your head. Earl. He’s not a
cheater; he always plays by the rules. He’ll grow up to be the most honest CEO
this country’s ever seen. Earl’s a hero. His best friend, Damian, he’s another
story. Damian doesn’t have a problem with cheating. As long as it doesn’t hurt
anybody, why not play to your advantage? That’s Damian’s philosophy. There’s
this contest. Yeah, a stinky sneakers contest.
Would it be worth cheating in a contest if it cost you your best
friend? Or your self-respect?
The genesis of a story about cheating and its consequences. My
first book, The Stinky Sneakers Contest,
derived from memories, moments, and disconnected thoughts. So many books do.
Ideas collide in my brain and characters appear. They shout, “Write about me!”
Luna. She showed up one night in a visitation. She said, “Write about me.”
Everyone seems to think you have to be a genius to come up with
the stories that make it into books. A genius would figure out that her feet
wouldn’t stink so bad if she wore socks. Your lives are rich with story ideas.
You have to be open to them, go with them, recognize and acknowledge them when
they appear. No one has a corner on imagination. Ordinary lives yield
extraordinary stories. Your life is worthy of being recorded and shared. Live
it. Remember it. Write it down. Develop the skills to become a good
storyteller. You may never get a book published, but amazing and astounding
discoveries about yourself and others are made when you write.
How long have you been writing?
Since September 30, 1989. Does that sound like a joke? I quit my
job the day I decided to be a writer. Yes, I was insane. I’d never written a
word of anything in my life. Even worse, as a child I was your classic
reluctant reader. I hated reading; it was boring and lame and meant for nerds
like my brother. I didn’t get turned onto reading until I was in junior high,
and then only by accident. I stumbled onto a book that opened my eyes, and my
heart, to what reading could be about: Self-affirmation, validation, adventures
of the mind. Books were thought-provoking, intellectually stimulating,
emotionally wrenching, laugh-out-loud funny, life changing, painful. (I love it
when a book hurts.) I’m not so crazy about how much life has to hurt, or how we
deliberately hurt each other. But that’s something to write about.
How did you get started?
Maybe this question should be, Why did I ever start? Didn’t I recognize
I was (1) inherently unqualified to be a writer, and (2) a hopeless case? Well,
no. That’s why ignorance is bliss. Two things propelled me toward writing: (1)
the desire to never work again, and (2) the voices in my head. One voice in
particular – the voice of a 13-year-old girl named Casey Shannon. I didn’t know
anyone named Casey Shannon. But she was talking to me, telling me about her
life. Casey was having problems with her best friend, Vickie Anselli. Who? And
this other girl, Skye Cunningham. Who were these people? Casey was agonizing
over her friends, her family, her sense of who she was, and where she was
headed in life. That last part I could relate to. My head began to fill with
Casey’s voice. I figured I had two choices: (1) commit myself to a mental
institution for some serious shock therapy, or (2) figure out a way to help
Casey, to free her, release her. Release me. Maybe if I wrote it down…?
Transferred the voices onto paper? Was that possible?
I searched around the house for writing paper and the only thing
I could find was a Big Chief tablet. It was yellowed and wilted, curling at the
ends. I scared up a crusty old Bic. Then I wrote down what Casey was telling
me. Day after day, she’d lay out her life. Geesh, this girl was a blabber. I
was writing, sure, but I wasn’t a writer. I had no writing skills. I began my
real journey to becoming a writer by reading. Over the next several months, I
checked out most of the young adult and children’s collection at my local
library. The periodicals, too. I read as a writer, analyzing structure,
language, style. I studied how authors breathed life into their characters and
stories, how plots were built, how pacing and timing were incorporated, how the
author’s voice spoke through their characters, and how it connected the writer
with the reader. I identified authors whose writing I most admired, whose
voices I loved, and read their entire bodies of work. Barbara Park, Chris
Crutcher, Betsy Byars. Sarah Dessen, M.E. Kerr, Richard Peck. Paul Zindel, James
Marshall, Harry Allard, Ellen Conford, Cynthia Rylant — too many great writers
to name. I practiced and practiced and wrote and wrote and cringed and winced
and wondered why I ever thought I could do this. I was horrible. What a hack.
After stumbling around on my own for a while, I discovered there
were books written by authors on how to write books — duh. Also how to submit
work for publication. Since I didn’t know what I was doing or where this
so-called writing would lead me, I wrote all kinds of things: Casey’s story,
yes, but also short stories, articles, essays, educational activities, long
novels, short novels, picture books, emergent readers. I submitted all the
stuff that didn’t make me gag, and after about six months my work began to
sell, first to children’s and YA magazines, then happily to Little, Brown Books
for Children.
Little, Brown never did publish Casey’s story. But Willowisp
Press did. Casey became Kacie. Vickie stayed Vickie, and Skye was trouble. Risky Friends was released in 1993.
I still write on Big Chief paper. I go through about a hundred
Bics a year. Every time I silence one voice in my head, another screams out,
“Write about me!”
What is your favorite book that you wrote?
It’s not Risky Friends.
I read that book now and hurl. I wasn’t a very good writer yet. I always
hesitate to answer this question honestly because, well, the truth is by the
time a book is published I will have been working on it for up to five years. I
will have read it at least a hundred times, gone over every word, sentence,
paragraph, and scene dozens and dozens of times. I’ll have savaged and
brutalized the manuscript for character consistency, authenticity, story
believability, truth. I will have read it aloud for cadence and pacing, played
the dialogue out in my mind over and over, usually at three in the morning.
Each and every page will have been tweaked and honed and spit and polished.
Spit again. Spit upon. The manuscript will have undergone critique by my
critique group, been revised, revamped, read by my agent, my editor, yeahed or
nayed, FedExed or e-mailed back and forth for months and months. Even up to the
last proof, the final galley, I’m substituting more current cultural references
and fixing, fixing, fixing. By the time a book is published, I’m so sick of it
I just want to bury it with military honors. Forget the honors. Pitch it in a
sinkhole.
The book I’m most interested in is always the one I’m writing at the moment. I’m
so into that book, I never want it to end. For a year I’m living and breathing
those characters, that story. Of course, this is the book I’m least willing to
talk about. It’s too new, too private, too close to me. Plus, it might suck.
Every book I write has a personal
connection. I’m a lesbian, living a love story (Keeping You a Secret); I’m a vegetarian (Love Me, Love My Broccoli); I competed in spelling bees as a kid (How Do You Spell G-e-e-k?). I had guinea
pigs for pets, and my sister was a compulsive gambler (B.J.’s Billion-Dollar Bet. Talk about unrelated events.). I was
overweight at one time, and I’ve always had strange and wonderful friends (The Snob Squad). I’ve felt alone,
alienated, judged, judgmental of others; I’ve always harbored a secret desire
to dye my hair pink (Define “
Why do you use bad words in your books? Why do you write about
controversial topics?
The first time I got the question about language it threw me
because I didn’t remember using objectionable language. I’ve since come to
realize that “objectionable” carries a wide range of definitions. Bad words,
hmm. Would those be crap and butt (in the Snob
Squad series)? Or bitch and slut (in Define
“
How much money do you make?
You can figure it out. An author makes ten percent of the retail
price on every book sold. So, if one of my books sells for $16.00, I make
______ (fill in the blank). Correct, $1.60. My agent gets fifteen percent of
that, which is about a quarter. Take out taxes of say, another twenty,
twenty-five percent (I’m not even in the thirty percent bracket), and I get
approximately a buck a book. Math test: How many books would Julie have to sell
to make enough money to pay her share of the mortgage and heat and phone and
Internet provider and still have enough left over to eat?
People who write for young readers do
it out of love. Period. We’re hungry a lot of the time.
How long does it take to get a book published?
From the idea stage to the arrival of that first hardcover copy,
which my editor ties in a ribbon with a congratulatory note (because she’s as
glad to get it off her desk as I am), anywhere from two to five years. I think
my fastest book, Luna, took the
typical year to research and write, six months to anguish over and ditz around
with details, and another year to publish. Two and a half years. You get really
old, really fast in this business.
What advice would you give
new writers?
My advice to young writers, to writers
of all ages, is to dig deep within yourselves and reveal your truths. Have the
faith to believe that your voice speaks for many; that what you say out loud,
in writing, may resound in a silent, or silenced, person’s heart. Write
honestly and fearlessly, even when your words invite censorship or controversy.
Respect and honor your readers. Your advocates, too: the librarians, teachers,
publishing professionals, friends, family, and fellow writers who have helped
you to learn and grow and fly. Whatever you do, whether you write or draw or
sing or simply work hard at a job you love, make your life count for something.
I FORGOT. READ. Readreadreadreadread. If
you want to be a writer, you have to read. You have to love to read. You have
to familiarize yourself with the genre of literature you want to write. And
READ.
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