How has working with young adults as a college professor affected your writing of young adult literature?
One
thing I love about my job is how it keeps me in touch with young
adults. I teach a class on the Young Adult novel, in which half of what
we do is read
books together. I learn a lot about the YA audience by seeing how my
students react to books like Laurie Halse Anderson’s Speak,
David Levithan’s Every Day, John Green’s The
Fault in Our Stars, and Sara Zarr’s How to Save a Life. Sometimes
my
students will fall in utter love with a book, but even so they are
willing to ask themselves hard questions about how honest the book is,
how believable—the kinds of questions that are useful for me to ask
about my own work as I’m revising it.
The
other half of what we do is write the first four chapters of our own
novels and then, at the end of the semester, outline the rest. There’s
such a range
of subject matter and style in the novels my students have produced for
that class, and their work provides a window into their interests and
worries, into how the world of teens and college students has changed
since I was their age—and how it hasn’t.
Why
does that target audience appeal to you?
I fell into writing YA fiction accidentally, by writing Jane,
a book I thought was for adults but that wound up being marketed to a YA
audience—and what a happy accident it’s been. Young readers are
unabashedly enthusiastic about reading, and about books as physical
objects. For proof, check out some of the blogs about
YA literature. There are so many of them—some by adults, and some by
teens--and every one I’ve seen has been created out of a pure and
wholehearted love of YA books. I’m a fairly unironic soul myself—when I
love a book or song or movie my love is deep and
geeky—so I really appreciate and relate to the enthusiasm of devoted YA
readers.
Also,
Young Adult books tend to foreground plot in a way literary fiction
often doesn’t, and I think that explains why so many adults are reading
YA these
days. There’s a basic human hunger for story, and YA feed that hunger.
As someone who began my writing career as a poet precisely because
conflict makes me uncomfortable and because I didn’t think I could write
a plot to save my soul, writing YA has made
me face those fears head on. It’s given me a crash course in writing
plot.
You
have
written two novels that are retellings of classic novels. Could you
describe what it is like to rework another author's work and make it
your own? Or, how do you make something that is distinctly someone
else's yours?
I
can only write about things that enthrall me, so novels I adore make a
good starting point. I begin by rereading a novel, even by listening to
the audio
book version while I fall asleep at night, so that I fully absorb the
source material. I write a rough outline of the plot, and then I set the
source material aside and let my imagination go to work. My project so
far has been to ask myself if the plot of
a classic could work in the present day and, if so, how. More than
anything else, I try to stay true to what’s essential in the characters
and to write from an understanding of and respect for the source
material.
That
said, I can only make my characters come alive by finding bits of
myself or people I know in them. My own personal obsessions surface in
each of my novels.
I’m a huge live music fan, and that particular passion fuels the plot of
all three of my novels. Nico Rathburn, the Mr. Rochester character in Jane
is a rock star on the brink of a comeback. Hence, the Heathcliff character in Catherine,
is a hungry aspiring musician inspired by punk rock. And Jesse, a key character in Love, Lucy
is a footloose street musician. As for my protagonists, Jane is a
painter, Catherine’s a poet, Lucy’s an actress. I’ve always been
obsessed with the arts, so my characters are too.
Your
forthcoming novel – Love, Lucy –
is a love story like your previous novels. However, unlike the others,
it is not a retelling of a classic novel. Where did you find the
inspiration to write Love,
Lucy?
Actually, Love, Lucy
was inspired by E. M. Forster’s A Room With a View—both the novel and the luminous
1985 Merchant-Ivory film version. It also takes some overt inspiration from another of my favorite films, Roman Holiday.
But
most of all, the novel was inspired by my own travels in Europe,
especially my very first backpacking trip when I was 22, fresh out of
college, and travelling solo. That trip was a really formative moment
for me—a real YA moment. It showed me I could
be self-sufficient and brave when I needed to be, and it awakened a
voracious hunger to see the world and learn new languages. I’ve been
meaning to write about that experience ever since, and Forster’s novel
helped me find a way back into that material.
How
does your work as a literary critic influence the strategies you use in your own writing?
It
doesn’t. When I’m writing, I have to put that critical self on ice, at
least for the first few drafts. There’s nothing more writer’s-
block-inducing than
that inner critic who questions everything a writer sets on paper. When
I’m drafting a novel, I’m trying to build up an illusion for myself and
my reader, and when I’m writing criticism, I’m analyzing--taking apart
the illusion to see how it works. These
two urges are antithetical, at least until a strong first, second, or
third draft is on the page.
That
said, when I take on a critical or editorial project, I always wind up
reading more widely than I would if left to my own devices. And reading
widely—as
well as deeply—can only make a writer stronger.
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