Debut Author Interviews

Paula Jolin is the author of In the Name of God (Roaring Brook Press/Holtzbrinck Group, Spring 2007)

• Paula Jolin on...After-Sale Revisions
• Paula Jolin on...Prior Research

How much revision did you do AFTER you sold your book to your publisher?

I did two rounds of structural revisions, and then we went one round of page by page, focusing on details like word choice, etc. The first round was the hardest. In the course of shopping the book, I’d already cut 20,000 words - I was astonished that my editor wanted me to cut another 10,000. Plus he suggested - very gently, his suggestions are always gentle - that part of those cuts include a subplot that I absolutely loved. The subplot, about the main character’s fantasy world, had little to do with the main plot, but I felt that it deepened the character and gave her extra layers. He felt that the subplot cut the tension - as the book goes along there’s a bit of mystery and intrigue, and the subplot drew the reader out of that world. So I asked all the beta readers who had read the book before, and they revealed something very interesting: all the writers thought the subplot was great and should stay in, but all the readers thought it was confusing - some of them had even skipped over those sections! So I decided to try taking it out - and sure enough, my editor was right. The book read much smoother that way, and the tension was higher - I found even I was turning pages quickly, and I wrote it!

The second round was just minor scenes - one that he felt didn’t have enough in it to forward the part, another that he thought was a little confusing. All three rounds together took about three months.

How much research and/or meditation about your subject did you do before you began your first draft?

In some ways I would say that I spent over a decade researching IN THE NAME OF GOD. I lived in different Middle Eastern countries - mostly Syria, but also Yemen, Morocco, Egypt and Sudan - and spent countless hours sipping really sweet tea, learning Arabic and discussing pretty much everything: football, why all Syrian men have facial hair, why someone might want to be a suicide bomber. I also did a lot of academic work on the Middle East in grad school - studying Islamic history and anthropology of the modern Middle East, which gave me a lot of opportunities to read texts written by a whole range of Muslims - from fanatics like Sayyid Qutb and Hasan al-Banna to very westernized Muslims like Mohammad Arkoun. Of course I did all this because I was fascinated by it, and not because I was planning to write a YA novel about it! Still, when I sat down to write IN THE NAME OF GOD, I didn’t have to do much direct research. It was more like writing about a place you know really, really well - the place you grew up, or the place you went to college - or the place where you spent most of your 20s, for example! Occasionally I checked something in the Qur’an, or googled something to make sure I had it right, or even e-mailed a friend - although those things were more for specific details like, what’s the circle down the street from Hotwel Cham called.

It does make writing my next book feel more intimidating though. I hope I don’t need to obsess about something for ten years before I get another book out of it.