|
faq How did you know you wanted to write for teenagers? I didn't, not at first. When I started writing Bringing Up the Bones, I didn't envision it to be a young adult novel. I didn't envision it to be a published novel, period. In 1998, I decided to go to Emerson College, to get my MFA in creative writing, because I thought I wanted to write television shows. But my first semester I took an adolescent novel writing workshop (which is where I started writing Contents Under Pressure). The following semester, I took a course in adolescent literature, and something clicked. I fell in love with the genre and knew this was the kind of writing I was meant to do. Will you ever write a book for adults? Maybe some day. Right now, I still have a lot of teen stories I want to tell. How long does it take you to write a novel? It depends. I wrote the bulk of Bringing Up the Bones and Contents Under Pressure during my three years at Emerson. But I didn't work on them both at the same time. During the fall, I'd work on Contents, then switch to Bones in the spring. This meant I usually worked on Bones over the summer, too, which is why I ended up finishing it before Contents. So, chronologically you could say they each took three years, but if you look at the amount of time I actually spent writing them, I'd say it was closer to a year for each. In contrast, I wrote the bulk of the first draft of Anyone But You during a hyper-caffeinated six-week period. The Sweet Life of Stella Madison, on the other hand, took me more than a year on the first draft alone. Sometimes I jokingly refer to myself as The World's Laziest Author, because I'm really bad at structured writing time. I don't have any set hours, or a set daily/weekly word/page goal. This is bad, and something I'm working on. But I'm also the kind of person who requires a lot of “percolation” for a story to come to fruition. By the time I'm ready to write a book, I've usually been thinking about my characters for a long, long time. So once I nail the voice in the first 30 pages or so, my pace really picks up. After page 100, the rest of the novel seems to write itself. Until the ending - I'm horrible at endings. My former editor at Random House, Jodi Keller, was a god-send when it came to endings. I'd turn in revisions with last lines like, "Help! I don't know how to end this!" and Jodi would patiently coax scenes out of me until we had something we both loved. Do you get to pick the covers for your books? Nope. My publishers come up with ideas for the covers and hire people to create them. They do ask me for my feedback, and there have been a couple of times I've asked for changes and they've made them. For the most part, though, I've been really happy with the artwork. (For more about book covers, keep an eye out for a new feature on the extras page titled "cover story.") How do you come up with your ideas? Are they based on true stories? A lot of people write and ask me if Bringing Up the Bones is autobiographical, and if I'm Bridget. I hate to disappoint them, but no and no. There are elements of Bones that I've "borrowed" from my life and the lives of my friends - for instance, the book was inspired by a car crash very similar to the one that takes Benji's life. Bridget's an only child, just like me, and I gave her my quirk of always relating things that happen in my life to television shows. But beyond that, no, I'm not Bridget. I'm also not Lucy, Seattle, Morgan, or Stella. And contrary to popular belief, True Confessions of a Hollywood Starlet's Morgan is not based on Lindsay Lohan, but was inspired by my childhood hero, Drew Barrymore. Yeah, what's up with you and Drew Barrymore, anyway? I've always, always identified with her. I've wanted to be her since E.T., but the real obsession started when she was in this under-appreciated film called Irreconcilable Differences. My parents had been through a similarly nasty divorce, though they weren't rich screenwriters and we didn't have a live-in Spanish maid. To this day, that movie makes me bawl. Then, when she wrote her memoir Little Girl Lost, and talked about her relationship with her real-life mom, I felt like, "Whoa, I totally know what you mean." Because I'd struggled with my mom, too (as do most teen girls at one time or another). And then she made this incredible comeback.... She just embodies everything I admire about the human spirit. Why are all of your Lara books set in Delaware? I grew up in Delaware, a state that's almost never featured in books, movies, or TV shows - unless it's being used as the punch line to some joke (like on The Simpsons). So, I always knew that whatever I did with my life, I'd make a concerted effort to put Delaware on the map. Of course, Ryan Phillippe beat me to it, but hey - I'm still doing my part. Why are your Lola books set in Fort Wayne, Indiana? I lived in Fort Wayne briefly after I graduated from college. I was working for a small newspaper, and though the job description was ideal, my boss was so not. She was actually kind of a terror - early on, I sprained my ankle pretty badly, and as I limped through the office, she barked, “How long are you going to milk that thing?” Regardless of Evil Boss, the Midwest and I didn't get along very well. I grew up in Northern Delaware, with all of these huge cities within driving distance - Philadelphia is about half an hour from me, Baltimore is about an hour away, Washington, D.C. is about a two-hour drive, New York about two and a half. Even Boston is only seven to eight hours from where I live. So to suddenly find myself in this place where the nearest big city is a three-hour drive, and there's no water anywhere ... let's just say it was a culture shock. On a side note: a lot of people who live in Fort Wayne were really upset by how the city was portrayed in the Lifetime movie adaptation of True Confessions of a Hollywood Starlet. The truth is, the movie satirized Fort Wayne in a way that my books do not. Morgan still refers to Fort Wayne as “Fort Lame,” but you have to remember that she was once this world-famous actress who walked red carpets across four continents. So to her, Fort Wayne is really lame. My own feelings about Indiana are probably far more colored by the horrible job I had than anything else. But there were parts of Fort Wayne that I really loved, and you can see them come through in the novels, if not the movie. Are you going to write a sequel to Bringing Up the Bones/Contents Under Pressure/Anyone But You/The Sweet Life of Stella Madison? I want to know what happens! I get asked this question all of the time. Sadly, the answer is no to all of the above. The only book I'd consider revisiting is Contents, but so much time has passed since the book was first published that Lucy's already off at college! Most of the time, when I finish a novel, I feel like I've already told the story that needs telling. As to what happens next, that's up for you to decide - which is why most of my books have more "open" endings. What about Starlet? You have to write a third one! Okay, so there is one character I'd kill to go back to, and that is Morgan Carter. Kristen Pettit, the editor with whom I worked on the Starlet books, and I had actually fleshed out a story line for a third book that focused on Morgan's relationship with her estranged father and her on-again/off-again romance with Eli Whitmarsh. But even though I still get several e-mails each week requesting another installment, Razorbill has had zero interest in publishing one. Go figure. Which authors do you like to read? I am an unabashed fan of brainy chick lit with soul. This means I absolutely love authors like Sarah Dessen, E. Lockhart, Megan McCafferty, and Meg Cabot (who's often dismissed too easily as fluff, but really writes some seriously smart and subversive fiction). Sometimes I read a book I can't shut up about, like Melina Marchetta's Saving Francesca, or Catherine Gilbert Murdoch's Dairy Queen. Oh, and Emily Lockhart's The Disreputable History of Frankie Landau-Banks is the most recent book to knock me on my butt (talk about smart and subversive!). There's a handout I take when I give presentations that was inspired by a list Laura Bush wrote for Seventeen years ago. Hers was a list of books everyone should read by the age of 17, but the list was comprised almost entirely of the kind of stuffy classics that turn teens into reluctant readers. So, I made my own list. It changes often, but as of July 2009, here's what's on it: Lara's Bookshelf: I am constantly revising this list (every time I've distributed it the choices have been different from the last). It is by no means comprehensive; in fact, YA advocates would be shocked to see some of my choices. Burger Wuss instead of Feed? How could I leave off The Outsiders and The Chocolate War? I repeat: it's not comprehensive. If anything, it's a quirky mix of some of my favorites - a sampling of several different authors, styles, and subgenres. Hope you enjoy! 1. Anderson, Laurie Halse. Speak. I tend to read far more books for teens than I do for adults, but my all-time favorite author is Douglas Coupland (his book Life After God, a collection of loosely linked short stories, changed my life).
© 2003-2010 Lara M. Zeises. All rights reserved.
|
