I was invited to take part in this awesome blog hop about how writers write by my Swoon Romance sister author, Melissa Petreshock. She sent me four questions about my writing process, and I've tried to be concise with my answers... But you know me, I tend to ramble. It's a part of my charm. ;)
1.
What are you working on right now?
Right now, I’m in the middle of edits for my
debut YA contemporary novel, TWELVE STEPS (coming 25 March 2014 from Swoon
Romance), and finishing up revisions on my upper middle-grade novel, LETTERS
FROM HEAVEN.
In TWELVE STEPS, sixteen-year-old Andi
knows she could be better than her sister, Laina, if people only gave her a
chance. But when Andi's crush asks her to fix him up with her sister, she
decides to stop waiting. The only chances she'll get are those she takes for
herself. Andi devises a twelve-step program to wrangle the spotlight away from
Laina and make it her own.
LETTERS FROM HEAVEN is about
thirteen-year-old Missy Tuttle, whose mother dies from a brain tumor. Dad
starts dating again (way too soon), her best friends have gone AWOL, and Missy
has no one to turn to. But then a letter arrives, signed “Love, Mom.” When the letters
keep coming, referencing events Mom couldn’t possibly have predicted, Missy
realizes she’s receiving actual letters from heaven.
2. How
does it differ from other works in its genre?
I’ve noticed, in a lot of middle grade and
young adult novels, the parents are absent or basically invisible. LETTERS FROM
HEAVEN centers around Missy’s changing relationships with her family and
friends, in the wake of her mother’s death. Although it’s definitely the story
of Missy’s journey, her parents are not absent. In fact, her mother is a strong
presence throughout the pages of the novel. In TWELVE STEPS, Andi’s story also
centers around her family relationships. (Specifically, it’s the story of her
relationship with her sister, but Andi’s parents are definitely a part of her
life.)
I grew up in a large, close-knit family, and
my mom and dad were “the cool parents,” not because they let me get away with
whatever I wanted, but because they were fun to spend time with, even though
they expected me to follow the rules. Those close family ties are reflected in
all of my novels.
3. Why
do you write what you do?
I write stories in a wide range of genres.
From YA contemporary romance (my debut novel, TWELVE STEPS comes out in March
2014) to MG contemporary w/ a hint of magic (LETTERS FROM HEAVEN) to my fantasy
picture books to the knitting how-to book I’m working on. But everything I
write has one common theme: Finding beauty in unexpected places and looking
beyond the surface to find hidden potential.
4. How
does your writing process work?
I’ve noticed that my writing process is different
for everything I’ve ever written.
My first (still unpublished) novel was written
almost as diary entries. Over the course of 3 weeks, I poured that first draft
onto the page as if I was my main character… and I ended up with a full first
draft with well-defined characters and lots of interesting events, but no real
plot to tie the whole story together. I typed up my hand-written pages, printed
it all out, and literally cut and pasted scenes, moving things around until the
plot emerged. (That’s when the real work of revising began!)
LETTERS FROM HEAVEN came in bits and snatches over
the course of three years. It’s the most personal, and emotional, story I’ve
ever written, and it took a lot out of me. Whenever a scene got too difficult
to write, I’d simply skip over it. Instead of writing the full draft at once, I
wrote it in layers, adding in the scenes I’d skipped, and filling in gaping plot
holes with each revision, until the full story had evolved on the page.
For TWELVE STEPS, I had to write an outline. I’m
usually a “pantser” when I pick up my story pencils (writing “by the seat of my
pants” instead of plotting out the details in advance), but Andi is a planner
and a list-maker. To get into her head and find her voice, I had to
step into the unfamiliar organizational territory of outlining.
And my latest, super-secret work-in-progress is
coming in bits and snatches of conversations first. I’ll fill in the details
once I get the story down in dialogue form. J
The only consistent element in all of my
manuscripts is that my first drafts are always written by hand on plain,
spiral-bound notebooks, with special pencils that I started collecting in third
grade, specifically for this purpose. (I bought a bunch of pretty pencils from
the school store and announced to my entire class that I wasn’t going to
sharpen them until I was ready to write my first published novel. And when I
finally sharpened them a few years ago, I knew I was ready to get serious about
my writing.)
Look
for these authors and their answers next week: