Debut Author Interviews

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

• Kelly Bingham on...Prior Research
• Sarah Aronson on...Prior Research
• Greg R. Fishbone on...Prior Research
• Tiffany Trent on...Prior Research
• Ruth McNally Barshaw on...Prior Research
• Carrie Jones on...Prior Research
• Melissa Marr on...Prior Research
• S.A. Harazin on...Prior Research
• Marlane Kennedy on...Prior Research
• Ann Dee Ellis on...Prior Research
• A.C.E. Bauer on...Prior Research
• Paula Jolin on...Prior Research
• Heather Tomlinson on...Prior Research
• Julie Bowe on...Prior Research
• Sarah Beth Durst on...Prior Research
• Suzanne Selfors on...Prior Research
• Joni Sensel on...Prior Research
• Jay Asher on...Prior Research

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

Well, for the ‘big picture’ answer, let me say that I began writing SHARK GIRL in summer 2001. It will be a real book on a real shelf in spring of 2007. So, six years in the making.

To be more specific, it took me three years to write the manuscript. SHARK GIRL is a poetry novel, but for the first year, I wrote it in prose and wandered down many wrong paths. I feel this was unavoidable; that I had to go there before I could find my groove. Once I did, it took two more years to complete. My story is about a girl who has her right arm bitten off by a shark. In 2004, just as I finished the mansucript, the very same thing happened to a real fifteen-year old girl in Hawaii. It was a horrendous and tragic coincidence. But even so, my agent at the time and I both decided we’d put the book away for a while. So it sat in a drawer for a year before I decided to submit it.

As for research, I knew nothing when I began writing about sharks or about amputation. I worried I’d mess up the facts, or represent the situation in an artificial way. I was terribly concerned about sounding condescending or glib or uninformed. Worry, worry, worry. So I read tons and tons, and then I surfed the net for vast amounts of information which I sorted through to the best of my ability. I can’t even guess the number of hours involved. I spoke to occupational therapists. I interviewed a maker of prosthetic limbs, and I interviewed a man who had lost his right hand early in life. How gracious a person do you have to be to grant a clueless author an interview, in which she asks personal questions about your life as someone with one hand? People really are brave and wonderful and amazing. And coming across people like this is one of the best parts of research.

Also, I had to research sharks and shark attacks! Ugh! Now I know more about both topics than I ever believed possible. I read chilling accounts, cold hard facts, and sorted through stomach churning photos. But as grueseome as it was at times, it was all necessary. And it helped me find my character and understand the facts. (And confirmed a lifelong belief that human beings should stay out of the ocean, period.)

The cool thing about research is that it doesn’t take you ‘away’ from your writing, even though you may spend hours each week doing it. It only adds to your writing. All of it is food for thought, so to speak, and all of it helps to expand your mind and your base of knowledge. And speaking for myself, I know that much of what I found in research sparked ideas for poems which found their way into the book.

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

HEAD CASE started out as a poetry novel. I think this is because I wasn’t ready to write the story. I started writing when I was very lonely and feeling judged. My son was in the hospital, and I was frustrated. The poems (I still like to call them poems!!) let me start envisioning the protagonist, his backstory, and the plot.

It wasn’t until my third complete revision that I made the decision to write the book in prose. Now it seems so obvious, but at the time, it seemed HUGE! By this time, I had researched spinal cord injury and the latest in rehabilitation. I’d spoken with many young men and women with quadriplegia. Writing in prose opened up my story. When I look at those early drafts, the only thing that stayed the same was the original premise, the protagonist, and the names of the characters.

I enjoyed the revision process. (And still am enjoying it!) With each revision, I learned more about Frank and his story. It took a lot of hard thinking and letting go of old ideas. I had to jump off the cliff.

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

I think it’s cool that Kelly’s book started as prose and turned into poety, while Sarah’s book started as poetry and turned into prose. THE PENGUINS OF DOOM started as a song that turned into a comic book that turned into a comic strip that turned into prose that turned into a role-playing game and back into prose. Really!

So let’s see, the question is about research… Septina’s father is a garbageman, so I subscribed to a sanitation workers’ listserv and learned a whole lot about the tips, tricks, and machinery involved. I also had to research the Royal Canadian Mounted Police, the CB lingo that truckers use, some rock start biographies, and a whole bunch of other very random facts. I don’t think I used even a tenth of it made it into the book.

Oh, and there’s skateboarding in the story, so I ended up playing a lot of Tony Hawk’s Underground on the PS2. Yeah, that’s right, I’m calling it RESEARCH!

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

In addition to writing historical dark fantasy about fiesty fairies and the girls who fight them ;), I also write nonfiction. I love to research! For IN THE SERPENT’S COILS, I set myself quite the research task. First, I had to figure out what life would have been like for a young girl living around DC at the time of Reconstruction, just after the Civil War. Then, I had to think about what reform schools—most of which were just getting founded at this time—must have been like in that era. Not to mention that I had to develop the mythos, which spanned a large chunk of Scottish history/Celtic myth. And there are also these pesky letters that my main character finds, written between a monk and nun in the 14th century….Got a headache yet?

For Book 2, I’m researching steamships, specifically the world’s largest (at the time) steamship, The Great Eastern. I’m having so much fun learning about it that I’m tempted to write a nonfiction piece about it, too. If only I had the time…

I guess you get the drift, though. Research=authenticity for me. The closer I can get to giving my readers a “real” experience, the better!

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

ELLIE MCDOODLE started as a short story, for an undetermined audience, about my childhood memories at National Guard camp with my dad and my huge family.
I read it at an SCBWI peer group critique session and some people immediately pegged it as a middle grade story and hilarious — news to me!
But I was working on picturebooks, so I shelved the story.

Three years later some writer friends suggested I try creating a kids’ book in my trademark sketchbook style, so I pulled out the camp story and reworked it to fit into a graphic novel style book.

It took 5 weeks to recompose into a kids’ book and almost no research, but it does have a science component (much of it culled from nature field trips with my kids’ classrooms).
My agent loves it, my editor loves it; I’m deliriously happy.

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

TIPS ON HAVING A GAY (ex) BOYFRIEND started because I heard about a girl whose big-time boyfriend came out. Then, despite the fact that she was pretty cool and popular, some people in her school tormented her about it.

Research about that? Well, I’ve had boyfriends who turned out to be gay. I talked to a few people this had happened to. And I’m the community advisor for our school’s civil rights team. This is a civil rights issue.

The other aspect of Belle, my main character, is that she has epilepsy. Her seizures are induced by caffeine and/or aspartame. Having epilepsy is a part of her character but it doesn’t drive the story, nor does it drive her character’s development, which is the case in almost all children’s books with epileptic main characters.

This was a definite choice and it was something that was bothering me because I am epileptic. I didn’t meditate on it long, but I did do my critical thesis on the perpetuation of negative epilepsy stereotypes in children’s literature. It was fascinating and disheartening and enlightening. Anyone want to see it? Probably not…but that’s where most of my Belle-related research came from.

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

I didn’t research in the proper sense at all. I’ve always read old folk & faery tales. I grew up with it, so from that perspective I suppose I’ve been researching for a couple of decades. I’ve never thought of it that way though. I just like old books. And I had this fascination with Cailleach Bheur that I’ve pondered for a while. Over the course of a week or so, I re-read all I have & could find on her—and the idea of the cailleach in general and the varying versions of her—to write a short story in fall ‘04.

In December ‘04, that short story was rejected from adult SpecFic magazines & children’s—both suggesting I try the other market. So I set it aside. But in the summer of ‘05 I picked up the short story & still loved it. I pondered for a few weeks. Then WICKED LOVELY just poured out over a few months in Fall ‘05. I suppose one could argue that there was meditation going on in a subconscious way for a while, but my actual conscious meditation was just a couple of weeks.

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

I did no research on BLOOD BROTHERS before writing the first draft. I was writing what I know.

During the revision process I did contact various experts in law enforcement, medicine, and biking cross country to verify some things.

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

The main character in ME AND THE PUMPKIN QUEEN grows giant pumpkins. Now I can’t even keep a houseplant alive. Not a bit of green in my thumb, unfortunately. So I did a massive amount of research before and during the writing of my novel. I scoured the Internet—there are surprisingly a lot of sites having to do with giant pumpkins. I also read several editions of Don Langevin’s HOW TO GROW WORLD CLASS GIANT PUMPKINS and consulted an expert in the field. The novel takes place in a real setting—Pickaway County, Ohio—and Circleville’s Pumpkin Show plays a major role in the story. But I didn’t have to research the setting at least—I grew up there!

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

My research for THIS IS WHAT I DID was non-traditional but still challenging. I had to ask my husband a lot about motorcycles, knots, and manga. In addition to his wealth of knowledge, I did some additional web research. I already knew quite a bit about scouting and winter camping but near the end of the editing process I realized I had some Klondike Derby facts wrong. Hmm. Oh and I had to do a lot of palindrome writing/research.

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

It takes me a long time to get to the story I want to tell. For NO CASTLES HERE, I interviewed a bunch of characters (I asked them nosy questions about themselves), I created three different story lines, and I wrote fairy tales. Truly, it was a mess.

So I stepped back, jettisoned an entire set of characters (which I ended up using in a different novel), and tried telling the story from three different points of view, while still including the fairy tales. More mess

Then I focused on one character, Augie, an eleven-and-a-half-year old boy in Camden, NJ, and made everything relate to him. I was able to keep the fairy tales, tell the story of other characters, and make the whole cohesive. It took over a year to get to my first draft, but I finally came up with a story that worked.

As for the research part, I generally write first and research later—I rely on what I know to create my story. As I write, I keep a running list of things I have to check (horticulture on horse farms, names for Philadelphia train stations, plausible town names in France, lyrics for a particular song, etc.). The research can be substantial (for example, I read a comprehensive general history of antibellum America, a whole series of runaway slave accounts, and as much as I could about the Underground Railroad, for a two-page scene), but it always comes after I have decided which way I want the story to go.

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.

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

In the sense that I grew up loving fairy tales, the answer is “forever.” For this particular story, though, about three months. I was fortunate enough to have access to UCLA’s Young Research Library, and spent a lot of time in their folklore and French history stacks. In the research phase, I usually read a variety of non-fiction, and study pictures and maps, trying to get a feel for the little details that will make my setting seem more real.

The internet is also a fantastic time sink research trove. One of the most serendipitous sites I found while researching THE SWAN MAIDEN was “Pascal le Berger du Vercours.” It’s a photo essay about the life of a contemporary French shepherd. His sheep are driven in trucks to the mountain pastures these days, but otherwise, his lifestyle sounds pretty traditional! There are pictures of his dogs, the sheep, and the scenery. That led me to research what breed of dog the shepherd had, and why, which later contributed to the plot.

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

I guess the only research I did was doing “helper mom” duty at my kids’ elementary school. I would spend an hour a week helping in a classroom, grading papers, helping individual kids who were struggling with reading, etc., and the whole time eavesdropping on everything that was going on in the classroom, conversations the kids were having, little goofy dialogues going on by the water fountain, and so forth.

As for meditation, the first line of my novel came to me while washing dishes one night. It was a serious thunderbolt moment for me. I ran right downstairs to my computer, soap suds still clinging to my wrists, and started typing. This was not the first draft, but it was THE draft. The one I knew was finally, finally (finally) the draft that was going to get the story told. It was great. I recommend washing dishes.

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

I read a lot of fairy tales before I even began the outline for INTO THE WILD. And I mean a LOT. From the well known tales, like Cinderella and Snow White, to the really obscure tales, like the one with the donkey that spews gold out of its butt! (Yes, there really is a fairy tale like that.) Hundreds of kids went to bed without fairy tales because I had them all checked out of the library. I hope someday they’ll read my book and find it in their hearts to forgive me…

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

My middle grade novel did not require any research, I’m happy to report. Such a different experience from my two previous novels, which were for adults and centered around the ancient Minoan civilization. The research for those books took months. But my kids’ book just kind of flowed - I guess it was because I wrote about things I knew, and I made half the stuff up, which is the best thing about writing fantasy.

From start to finish, the 50,000 word novel took 8 months. I did meditate a bit on marketability before writing. For example, I originally intended on writing the book for girls with a female protagonist, but then I decided to make the hero a boy, with a very smart little sister so I could appeal to both genders.

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

At the risk of earning the “Longest Gestation” award — REALITY LEAK started life as a screenplay in about, oh, 1998 or so. I worked on it in that form for a couple of years and decided to try it as a kids’ novel in 2000. (Yes, that’s right, 7 years before its release date. I have some excuses, but I’ll spare you.)

That said, I don’t research or meditate much at all — I just get an idea and start writing, like unravelling a sweater. (That’s why I have lots of knots to work out in revision, I guess.) Even for my historical fantasy, I did most of the research after the first draft was written. I don’t recommend this method; I just can’t help it.

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

13 REASONS WHY is a suspense novel dealing with suicide. In high school I was trained in suicide intervention as part of a Peer Helping class. I’ve also read many books on the subject and have known people who have either committed or attempted suicide. So when the main idea for the book hit me, it wasn’t something I shied away from. The idea came while I was driving in the snow at around four in the morning. I pulled into the nearest gas station parking lot and just sat there (with the heater running!) for about twenty minutes because the main storyline came flooding fully formed into me. That night, I wrote the introductory scene and part of the first chapter as fast as I could because I wanted to capture the eerie atmosphere while it was still fresh.

When it came to writing the thirteen backstories that make up my novel, I talked to several of my female friends about what happened to them in high school that they thought they would never get over. The greatest compliment I received during a critique of my manuscript came from one of my female writing partners. “I swear, somewhere inside of you there’s a sixteen-year-old girl hiding.”