Books, Road to Pub, and Best Writing Advice: Author Interviews with Adam Seltzer, Jen Longo and Ellen Hopkins!
1 Books, Road to Pub, and Best Writing Advice: Author Interviews with Adam Seltzer, Jen Longo and Ellen Hopkins!
I found myself in a twitter conversation about Christian YA books, and I thought, “Hey, someone ought to write one for the Satanic kids.” I think I tweeted out the first few paragraphs almost exactly as they appear in the final draft.
Off and on for a couple of years; I’d work on it to amuse myself during downtime, then tell myself to get back to work on the other projects that I thought would be more commercial. I hadn’t done a YA book with a guy narrator in five or six years; my publisher back then told me they were hard to sell, and I was better off either writing more girls or switching to middle grade. I did a little of both.
Well, this is my sixteenth book, counting nonfiction, a couple written under other names, etc. In any given year I’ll write 3-5 books; maybe a third of the ones I write get published. The rest get used for parts; there are a couple of scene in PLAY ME BACKWARDS that are partly drawn from an unfinished one about younger versions of the characters called TAKE THIS TEST AND SHOVE IT, and others come from an old graphic novel script. If you want to go back further in time, I wrote three or four full novels before the first one that came out. The first one I wrote when I was fifteen or sixteen, the first one that was published came out when I was twenty-six.
I get up and go to work every morning, usually at the closest coffee shop to my house. Putting together playlists, creating an atmosphere, etc are really just excuses not to work. But I do them all the time. Some songs one every version of the playlist for this project include “DC Comics and Chocolate MIlkshakes” by Art Brut, “Stay Hungry” by Twisted Sister, “Thinking of You" by Katy Perry (I always had visions of publishers making me use a Katy Perry song as the title) and “Ask Her for Adderall” by the Hold Steady. And lots of The Mountain Goats.
I hate to say it, but the most practical advice anyone can give is “follow the trends and stick to the formula.” I only manage to do so off and on, but the difference in how interested people are in the books when I do is pretty shocking.
My parents bought our town cemetery when I was in middle school, around the time a bunch of really random deaths were happening in the close circle of our family and friends. It was a pretty harsh and rapid introduction to death and mourning for a young kid, and the way our parents guided mine and my siblings' responses to the sadness around us was always kind of baffling to me. As we grew up and each worked different jobs in the graves, my sisters and I would encounter people and events that were at turns heartbreaking and beautiful and confusing and just awful and our responses were constantly monitored and often mocked. It was messed up! I've always written, all my life, and I think this story, many versions of it, began forming when I was maybe twelve years old.
The first incarnation of the book was as a full length play, part of my grad school thesis in Playwriting. I wrote the play in 2000, then began the prose version of the story when my daughter started pre-school in 2006. It took two years to write, a year to revise. So really, I guess thirteen years? Yikes.
SIX FEET OVER IT is the first novel I've written. It took me a year to land an agent, and once I did she bravely led me through a year of doing spec revisions for several editors who "Loved" the MS, but wanted changes. I would revise for months to each editor's liking, then they would ultimately turn it down. This happened five or six times, until Random House bought it in 2011. The book is completely different in many ways from the initial version, and once Random bought it it went through several more revisions. Not at all easy, not a road for easily bruised egos or wishy-washy agents. My agent is AMAZING. So is my editor. I won the literary lottery and I'm grateful every day for those two unbelievably talented women and everyone at Random who brought this book to life.
I recently moved to Seattle from San Francisco where I at last have the writer's dream: a home office. My ritual is blessed and rigid: I run every morning at 7am, take my daughter to school at 8am, shower and do errands till 10am and then it is ON. People better not mess with me from the hours of 10am-3pm because I AM WRITING. I take breaks, of course, but that's WRITING TIME. I listen to music, religiously. I've written every word of every play and story and book I've worked on since 1998 listening to one artist: Enya. She is just perfect! Moody and easily tucked into the back of my mind. I love my office, and am incredibly grateful my husband and I have figured out how to make it work for me to take care of things at home and write. Still though, there are days I have to leave the house and go to a coffee shop or the library or I'll be distracted by the never-ending laundry and dirty dish piles.Seattle is a haven of writers who are so generous and I've been lucky enough to start having writing dates with some of them, which are incredibly productive. When I'm revising things shut down and my family is like, "Are we ever going to eat or have clean underwear again?" The answer is, of course, sure. As soon as I'm finished with this revision, People.
Before you begin, make sure you've got at least a basic grasp of the main tenants of sentence structure and grammar. And plotting prose. READ. All the time, and make note of why you love what you love and hate what you hate, what confuses you and delights you and WHY. Outline. It may work for you. Write the book that won't leave your mind alone, the story that nags you night and day. Find an agent who loves your book for the same reasons you do, same goes for an editor, and then trust them. And trust yourself. Trust your story and why you wrote it. Two books I could now never do without: ON WRITING by Stephen King and THE ELEMENTS OF STLYE by Strunk/White/Kalman, a book suggested by King in ON WRITING. In a sea of books about how or why to write, they are all I will ever need.
There were a couple of mosque burnings in the news. I posted on my FB page, "We all serve one Creator," meaning Christians, Jews, Muslims, Buddhists, whomever. A teen slapped me, saying, "It's awfully arrogant of you to think I have to believe in anything at all. I'm an atheist." That interested me as a storyline....
I broke in as a freelance journalist and did that for a number of years. Some of the stories I wrote seemed like they'd make interesting nonfiction children's books. I was already involved with SCBWI and thought I'd write picture books--not my skill set! But I was learning the children's publishing industry that way and published 20 nonfiction children's books before the story idea for CRANK hit me. I met an editor from S & S at a conference, showed her ten pages of CRANK, and the book sold with only 75 pp complete. RUMBLE is my 11th YA with S & S.
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These last two days have been great days for Sammy. He finally got some really good rest, as did we. Last night was the first really great night of sleep I think we all got since we got to the hospital on the 19th. Which was certainly needed. The last couple days have been a bit crazy, in good and in overwhelming ways.
Sunday night Charles left to go back to the Air Force Base he is currently assigned at to finish his last bit of training. It was a really hard decision, but we both felt it was the best of the options presented to us. He only had a few days left on his orders and figured that was better than a possible month of make up down the line at some point. So he went. Monday he let me know that he was finishing that day and would be home in the evening. Such an awesome blessing. We are so grateful that they were willing to make this happen, so he could come back to where he needed to really be without penalty of having to make up the time down the line. Whatever he has left in his training will be done during future Reserve weekends. They are granting him to return here till his orders are finished the end of this month. We are so grateful for this gift. So Charles got back to the hospital Monday night.
Today has been a very busy day. And I am so glad Charles was home to be apart of it all. Sammy got to stand up using a contraption that fully supported him in a standing position. He also got to leave the hospital room and go for a walk around our floor of the hospital. A nice change of view for him, plus he got to be in my arms and get mama cuddles. His Grammy actually got him to laugh. Which was the sweetest sound any of us could ever hear. It was so amazing to hear a little piece of my Sammy back.
Today we also met with the oncologist about Sammy’s case. His oncologist spoke with us for over an hour about Sammy, discussing his diagnosis and giving us an idea of their treatment plan for Sammy. Sammy is diagnosed with standard medulloblastoma. It is a rare form of childhood cancer, but it is the most common childhood brain cancer. As brain cancer is rare. We were told today that they felt they removed as much of the tumor as possible, but no way to say that they absolutely got everything. They will be doing a spinal tap later this week to make sure that the cancer cells have not spread. Right now he is placed at average risk, but if something is found his risk level will change to high. They would like to do the Head-Start III protocol with Sammy. Which is a chemo only treatment plan. His oncologist explained to us that he feels the risks to using radiation on a child like Sammy at his are not worth the benefits at this point in his journey. Radiation has a lot of risk associated with it. This does not mean that radiation is off the table, but that they will not be starting his treatment with radiation.
The Head-Start III protocol (from my current understanding) will be 5 rounds of chemo. Each round of chemo is a 28 day cycle. The first 3-4 days will be the chemo treatment, followed by 2-3 weeks of recovery, followed by whatever is left to go home before the next round begins. This will be an inpatient treatment, so we are told to expect to spend majority of the next 6 months living at the hospital. We will be learning more specifics over the next couple of weeks, but we got the basic overview today as a starter.
We have a lot to figure out for the days and months ahead. And will certainly be needing a lot of support. We have a lot of questions to and pieces to still figure out in the journey as we are only really beginning to get a glimpse of what this adventure has in store for us. But for now we have a place to start. A basic time line and a general idea of what is ahead of us. Now to start putting the puzzle back together and making the pieces fit.
PRAY for continued healing for Sammy as he recovers from his brain surgery. PRAY he continues to shine through despite all the challenges he currently is facing. PRAY we are able to clearly explain all that is happening with Sammy and that he is able to understand all that he needs to understand. PRAY for us as we fully begin to process his diagnosis and what that means for us all. PRAY we just will know if this is the right place for us to be for his treatment. PRAY we will be shown clearly if this is not the place we are supposed to be for our journey. PRAY for our spirits to be calm and peaceful. PRAY for healing of our hearts as we learned last night our family dog was killed over the weekend, and PRAY for our boys as we try to explain to them the loss of their furry brother. PRAY for each person that plays a role along Sammy’s journey. PRAY we all have another restful, refreshing night of sleep.