Author Interview -- Jodi Meadows

As promised in the newsletter, we have another Author Interview for you! This time, it's with newly-published author Jodi Meadows. Write On!, meet Jodi!

JODI MEADOWS

Jodi Meadows lives and writes in the Shenandoah Valley, Virginia, with her husband, a Kippy*, and an alarming number of ferrets. She is a confessed book addict, and has wanted to be a writer ever since she decided against becoming an astronaut.

*A Kippy is a cat.

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MAGGIE: Your debut novel, "INCARNATE", was just released this year! How exciting! Tell us a little bit about it-- the premise, the story behind writing it, and how it ultimately landed in book stores.

JODI: Hah, this question is totally cheating. There are like five questions in one! But okay. I've actually gone over the publication process with Authoress Anonymous recently, HERE*.

So, the short version is this: many years ago, I had an idea to write a story set in a world where everyone was perpetually reincarnated, except one new person. But that idea sounded hard, so I put it aside and worked on other projects. Then, when I was coming off a really low point in my writing life, I decided to write a story for me, rather than for publication. I wrote INCARNATE. It ended up getting published anyway. 

MAGGIE: Maybe just a little. ;) Perfect answer! Which brings us to: Querying can be a long and wearying process, and I'm sure you've had your fair share. What is the best advice you can give to those of us who plan to query in the (near) future, or who already are querying now and may be a little discouraged?

JODI: Hmm. Keep querying. Query more. Query until you run out of agents to query, and then start querying the next book. (You have been writing the next book, haven't you?)

But also, pay attention to what kind of responses you're getting. If your first ten or fifteen responses are all form letters and no requests, then you probably need to work on your query letter. Compare it to successful queries. (Many authors post theirs online somewhere.) Figure out what their queries are doing right and what you can learn from them. Make sure you're sending out the absolute best query possible.

And if you're getting lots of requests but no offers, it's time to start looking critically at your first pages or entire manuscript. If they give you feedback, don't ignore it. Consider their comments and decide if they're in line with your story. Believe in your manuscript, but don't be afraid to see its flaws and fix them.

MAGGIE: Excellent advice! Semi-related, I've heard tell that you're wickedly fast when it comes to drafting novels. What's your trick?

JODI: There's no trick. When I'm drafting a novel, I write every day for hours and hours. My average wordcount per hour isn't much different than most people's. The only difference is that I can write all day because I don't have another job.

MAGGIE: Ahh. Makes sense! On that note, how many novels, in total, have you written?

JODI: Oh goodness!

Finished manuscripts . . . twenty-one. INCARNATE was number seventeen.

MAGGIE: Wow! Just out of curiosity, do you hope to publish all or some or a few of those twenty-one stories?

JODI: There are a few of those manuscripts I'd like to see published, but a lot of them . . . no. They were good practice. I'm glad I wrote them. They helped me figure out my strengths and weaknesses, and they taught me a lot. But some just don't need to leave the house. Ever.

MAGGIE: Let's talk CHARACTERS. They're so important to a story. How do you, personally, bring characters to life? 

Image swiped from HERE

JODI: For me, my characters appear in my head fully formed, but transferring them to paper can be tricky. Even though they're all there already, I still have to get to know them. Some people do character interviews and take lots of notes on how their characters might react to different situations. Though I've tried that, it wasn't for me. The best thing for me has been to drop them in a scene (even if it doesn't make it into the story) and see what they do. I try to listen to their voice, consider their past and motivations, and learn their deepest fears.

MAGGIE: When it comes to editing novels, a lot of us feel daunted or buried alive in our own mistakes and failings. How do you tackle edits and revisions? What mindsets have you found help to carry you through?

JODI: The first thing I do when I get back edits is walk away from the computer. Alarmingly, I tend to go on cleaning binges while I let ideas tumble in my head. It's important for me to think about things before accepting or disregarding them, that way I don't ignore something because they're WRONG or accept something because I'M SUCH A TERRIBLE WRITER I WILL NEVER BE GOOD ENOUGH WOE. Neither extreme is good for the story or me, so thinking about it while I do something productive -- that works best for me.

Once I've come to terms with my perfect story not being so perfect, I try to make a plan. If I'm still feeling good about it after a couple days, I get to work.

MAGGIE: Excellent advice. You're famous for your epic kisses (and I do agree, INCARNATE has one of the best I've ever read.) What is your view on romance in novels, and what you've found works or doesn't?

JODI: I love romance in novels! Obviously. :)

Writing a good romance isn't easy, but a well-written romance just stays and stays and stays with you. They make me happy. 

Since you mentioned my kissing scenes, I'll also add that while I like it when they kiss . . . I also try to focus more on the emotions that come with the physical. Those emotional responses are just as (often more) important than whose hand is where and what someone's tongue is doing.

MAGGIE: So true! At the end of the day, published or unpublished, most of us reading this are writers. Because it's always uplifting to read, what are your dreams as a writer? Where do you want your stories to take you? 

JODI: The thing about writing dreams is that no matter what goals you accomplish, there are always more just beyond that. If your dream is to write a book, well, what about getting that published? What about writing more books? What about hitting a bestseller list, or award nomination, or reaching a certain audience, or selling a certain number of copies . . . 

I played the goals game for a long time before INCARNATE sold. I still do, to an extent (because I want to be able to sell more books and feed my cat and ferret in the future), but I've also learned a lot about how focusing solely on goals affects one's happiness. 

So for me, the best thing has been to have a few goals, sure, because they can drive me to do better than I am, but my biggest focus needs to be writing the best story possible. I need to write a story that moves me, first. I need to write for myself, rather than everyone else, and trust that someone else out there (hopefully lots of someones) is going to love the end result as much as I do.

My biggest dream as a writer? To never forget what's truly important when I'm writing a story.

MAGGIE: Beautifully said. Are you writing anything now? If so, describe it in three words.

JODI: Incarnate number three. ;)

MAGGIE: Woohoo! I can't wait. If you could have only one super power, what would it be and why?

JODI: Supergenius. Because who doesn't want to be ridiculously smart? Maybe I would finally be able to achieve Perfect First Drafts.

MAGGIE: Love it. We'll end with a fun one. Favorite ice cream flavor?

JODI: Chocolate chip cookie dough. Ice cream AND cookies together in one bowl. Yum.

MAGGIE: Excellent choice. Now I want some. 

Thank you so much for participating! You've given some AWESOME answers. 

JODI: Thank you for having me!

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*Link not working? Copy & paste: http://www.misssnarksfirstvictim.blogspot.com/2012/01/release-day-interview-with-jodi-meadows.html

Until next time!

Author Interview -- Kate Constable

It's TIME! Another wonderful author has agreed to an interview, sharing insight and encouragement. WOTeens, meet Kate Constable!

KATE CONSTABLE

"Kate Constable was born in Victoria but spent much of her childhood in Papua New Guinea, without television but within reach of a library where she 'inhaled' stories. She studied Arts/Law at Melbourne University before working part-time for a record company while she began her life as a writer. She has had stories published in Meanjin, Island and other literary magazines. The Singer of All Songs, The Waterless Sea and The Tenth Power form the Chanters of Tremaris series and were her first books, published by Allen + Unwin with very successful overseas sales, followed by a stand-alone novel set in the same world, The Taste of Lightning. She has also written a junior fiction book, Cicada Summer, as well as two books for the popular Girlfriend Fiction series - Always Mackenzie and Winter of Grace. Kate lives in West Preston, Victoria, with her husband and two daughters. She blogs HERE."

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MAGGIE: You're the published author of more than one book. Tell us a little bit about the inspiration for your stories, in particular the Chanters of Tremaris trilogy (which I've read, and adore!)


KATE: The Singer of All Songs (the first book in the Chanters of Tremaris trilogy) was my first attempt at writing fantasy. I'm not a big fantasy reader though I loved fantasy books as a child, so I really came to the whole genre without much baggage. Having said that, there were three big influences on the world of Tremaris:

1) The Earthsea books of Ursula Le Guin. I read these in one big gulp just before I started writing Singer, and it shows (at least I hope it does). I absolutely loved Le Guin's complex world-building, and her thoughtful and compassionate philosophy. I deeply admire her writing, with its serious, spiritual core.

2) The Mists of Avalon by Marion Zimmer Bradley was a favourite book for me as an adolescent and young woman, and I reread it several times. I loved the whole idea of the Arthur myth being retold from a female perspective, and I was very attracted to the notion of a women's community dedicated to the learning of magic. Calwyn's walled home, Antaris, was strongly influenced by the descriptions of Avalon and its priestesses.

3) Blake's Seven was a cheesy British sci-fi TV series which I adored when I was a teenager! It was very dark, very witty, but very cheap... all about a gang of space outlaws on the run from the evil Federation in a dystopian future. For ages I flirted with the idea of writing my own space opera with a similar rebel gang, who eventually morphed into the characters of Calwyn's motley crew in Singer. Darrow was actually named for the actor Paul Darrow, who played the character of Avon, who I swooned over in Blake's 7, though my Darrow is LOT nicer than the cold and calculating Avon!

Chanters of Tremaris trilogy

MAGGIE: Super awesome! You've created such a beautiful world. How do you worldbuild? What are your tips, tricks and methods for bringing the places in your mind to life?

KATE: I decided quite early on that Tremaris would be a society without literacy, so no written language, and also no accurate time-keeping. So instead of writing 'a second later...' I would have to write 'a heartbeat later...' or 'In the space of a breath.' I think having to remind myself about that as I wrote helped to preserve the 'otherness' of Tremaris. I worked out the Nine Powers, or different kinds of magical chantments, before I did anything else, which was fun, and that dictated some of the shape of the story as it unfolded. I'm the kind of person who likes to make rules and stick to them!

I also relied quite heavily on a fascinating book called The Year 1000, by Robert Lacey and Danny Danziger, which describes what daily life was like for English people in the year 1000 - a largely pre-literate, pre-industrial society not unlike Tremaris. So I picked up a few tips from there too.

I tend to have a very vivid mental picture of the places where I set my characters - sometimes based on real locations, or places I've seen on TV - but tweaked for my own purposes. But many of the place-names, cultures and architecture of places in Tremaris drew on worlds and countries and cities I'd dreamed up as a teenager and written down in notebooks when I was supposed to be doing my maths homework - so all that daydreaming wasn't a waste of time, after all.

MAGGIE: You have one of those casts of characters that we as readers fall in love with. (Or at least, I did!) What are some pointers on bringing characters to life? And what inspires your characters -- people in real life, movies, etc.?

KATE: I guess I put my characters together with little bits from everywhere - characters I've seen on TV or known in books, people I know in real life - though I try not to base anyone too closely on someone I know, because that can get embarrassing!

To tell the truth, I'm not too sure exactly how characters come to life for me. I think this might be part of the writing process that happens unconsciously in my case! One thing I do try to remember is that no one ever believes they are doing the wrong thing - everyone has a reason for acting the way they do. But people's reasons clash and conflict. That's what makes the world interesting.

MAGGIE: So true. Most of us here on Write On! are not (yet) agented. What's your finding-an-agent story? When did you decide that it was time to stop fussing and start querying? 

KATE: I must admit that I didn't ever actively hunt for an agent, in fact I'm not entirely sure what a query letter looks like! I was very lucky that an agent contacted me after I'd won a prize in a national magazine's short story competition. At that time I had only ever written short stories, but she took me out for a coffee and said 'If you ever write a novel...' It was a wonderful encouragement and when I did later finish a novel manuscript, I sent it to her. That novel ended up unpublished, but my next one was The Singer of All Songs. I was very, very fortunate to be spared that whole gruelling process, it all happened very organically for me.

MAGGIE: Wow! How awesome and lucky! So, you have a very sumptuous writing style. Does it come naturally or is there a trick?

KATE: Ooh, sumptuous! I like that, thanks very much! In fact, as time has passed, I have worked on paring back my writing style, so Singer is about as sumptuous as it gets for me. Almost the first thing that my first editor said to me was (quite sternly), 'Too many adjectives, too many -ing words.' I try to write quite plainly now and not let the scene get too cluttered with 'describing' words - you know what writing teachers always tell you -- a strong verb can do the work of ten adjectives, or something like that... But I do love my adjectives and adverbs and I have to be careful that they don't take over! So I guess the answer is that it does come naturally - maybe too naturally!

MAGGIE: Good advice! It's true adjectives are easy to over-use. What are some of your favorite books and authors?

KATE: [Here Kate listed 12 wonderful books*, and then proceeded to choose one (or some) to focus on.] I'm thinking I might pick the Green Knowe books, partly because they're fresh in my mind as I'm currently reading them to my ten year old daughter and loving them all over again. They are gently magical, written with a wonderful sense of poetry that really benefits from reading aloud, and a lovely awareness of the way history runs through a place - in this case, a very old house and its garden and river - which is a particular favourite theme of mine. In fact a few of the books on my favourites list share that same theme.

MAGGIE: Awesome! I'll add them to my to-read list. What's the hardest part of writing for you (i.e. editing, drafting, huge revisions, etc.)? How do you tackle it?

KATE: Actually I really love redrafting and editing! That's my favourite part of the process, polishing and chipping and recrafting to make the material as good as I can. What I find most difficult is coming up with ideas - is that peculiar? I'm certainly not one of those writers who has notebooks overflowing with ideas for books and can't choose between them! I am quite methodical, I like working my way through one project from beginning to end, then moving on to the next thing.

What I enjoy most is the part where the hard work of thinking up and structuring the story is all done, I have a rough draft in front of me, and I can concentrate on just seeing the action in my mind's eye as it unfolds, and describing it as best I can.

MAGGIE: Neat! Are you writing anything now?

KATE:  I'm working on a YA novel set in Papua New Guinea in the 1970s, just before the country gained independence from being an Australian-run territory. It was an interesting time, historically, but not many people in Australia know much about it. And of course I'm interested in it because my family was there (though I was a lot younger than my main character). I've been working on this novel for a long time but it's finally starting to come together. It's tentative titled Independence.

And I've just had a new book come out in Australia called Crow Country, which has been pretty exciting!

MAGGIE: How exciting! And now, to wrap everything up, what's the best advice that you can give to young aspiring authors?

KATE: The only advice I have is to read as much as possible, and as many different styles and genres as you can -- try not to get stuck always reading the same kind of book. If you normally read fiction, try non-fiction. If you usually read fantasy, try some sci-fi. If you only like realism, try some fantasy -- mix it up a bit!

And of course, write as much as you can. Apparently you have spend ten thousand hours practising any skill before you can hope to become really good at it, and I suspect writing is no different! So start clocking up those hours! And good luck. Everyone needs some.

*The Green Knowe books by Lucy M. Boston

Little Women by Louisa May Alcott

The Secret Garden by Frances Hodgson Burnett

The Little White Horse by Elizabeth Goudge

The Ghost of Thomas Kempe by Penelope Lively

Anne of Green Gables by L.M. Montgomery

The Railway Children by E. Nesbit

A Vicarage Family by Noel Streatfeild

Tom's Midnight Garden by Philippa Pearce

The Long Winter by Laura Ingalls Wilder

The Voyage of the Dawn Treader by C.S.Lewis

The Wolves of Willoughby Chase by Joan Aiken

Author Interview -- Erin Bow

We have a special treat for you today. An interview with author Erin Bow!

ERIN BOW

"My name is Erin Bow, and I'm the author of Plain Kate (Scholastic 2010), which just -- HUZZAH! -- won the TD Canadian Children's Literature award, one of the top Canadian awards for kidlit.  I also write poetry, and have two books of poetry published under my maiden name, Erin Noteboom.  They won prizes too.  I'm married to James Bow, also a YA novelist, and we have two small daughters.  We live in Kitchener, Ontario.  I tweet at @erinbowbooks, and have fun website with a blog HERE."

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MAGGIE: There's a story behind every book, and you're the (published) author of more than one! Tell us a little bit about the inspiration behind your books, in particular Plain Kate (which is an absolute must-read!)


ERIN: I think all writers have something that they don't work on, something that's a gift.  For me, it's characters, and some "original equipment" for the story: a bit of premise and set up.   I don't usually know where these things come from, but with Plain Kate, I at least remember when it came.

I was on an airplane.  In fact I was heading home from a trip, and I was very tired.  I'd also just read a big collection of Russian Fairy Tales.  I leaned my head on the window and watched the plane separate from its shadow.  The plane rose and the shadow stayed on the ground, getting thinner and stranger.   I imagined that happening to a human shadow; it struck me as so Russian, so Fairy Tale.   And suddenly, from nowhere, this character waltzed into my head: Katerina Svetlana, called Plain Kate, a wood carver and the daughter of a wood carver (I'd also just been talking to my dad about his woodworking).  A fairy tale girl, by which I mean a strong girl in a tight spot.  I knew she'd be forced to sell her shadow.  And I knew that she'd have a talking cat.

That was all I knew -- the "original equipment" of the story -- and it took some time to find out more.   But the first few pages, that I wrote on the plane that day, remain almost untouched in the final draft.

Erin's Books

MAGGIE: How cool! Characters rock. I really enjoyed your characters --  especially Taggle, who was his own character -- throughout Plain Kate. Do you have any advice on characters? How do you bring them to life?

ERIN: You're going to hate me, but I really don't have advice about characters.  I don't work at them, I don't design them. Now, PLOT I work on, because I'm not very good at it, and so I have a hundred tricks to compensate.  But characters are just given to me. They come real and I have to try to keep true to them.

One general trick I have is to read everything you write out loud.   Read it while you're drafting and read it again when you think it's finished.  It's easier to spot anything that rings false that way -- and particularly easy to spot where a character's voice has drifted a little.  Voice is key.  Dialog is the scene-by-scene heart of getting characters to come to life.

MAGGIE: Well, it's totally working. That brings me to the next question: voice. Voice is so important in a novel, and you've really got yours down. What are a some tips for teen writers on voice?


ERIN: I think having a voice as a writer is mostly about confidence.  It's sort of the same as public speaking: you want to sound like some version of yourself, not nervous or stilted or artificial, as if you were about to faint at any moment.  People will feel bad and awkward and want to leave.  That confidence might come naturally to some people -- I think many writers have never thought about their voice at all -- but for many of us, it has to be earned.

How do you earn it?  Two things, I think: practice and play.  Practice is just writing a lot -- and particularly finishing things.  Most young writers start things and don't finish them.   It's so hard to push those early stories or poems forward.   Ira Glass said something amazing about this -- that writers get into the game because they have taste: they know good writing when they see it.  And then, because they have taste but don't yet have skill, they dislike their own writing.  They can see all its failures.  How do you keep going when you're failing like that?  Well, first know that everyone fails at first.  Ray Bradbury said you have to write a million bad words before you write one good book.  Let's hope he's overestimating that, but still, take it from Ray:  everyone fails.  But it's by making yourself finish, keeping going at things, that you'll fail better.

The second way to earn confidence is to play.  Just lower the stakes for yourself.  It doesn't have to be the next New Yorker short story, it just has to -- and here you should fill in the blank.   Be a fairy tale told from the villain's point of view.  Be a soap opera that's so over the top it will make people laugh.  Use rhymed couplets.   You can't succeed at a whole novel/play/book of poems all at once, but you can probably do this, and it will hone your skills and sharpen your confidence.  Pick new forms, play games with them.  Fan fiction, frankly, is a great set of training wheels.  My husband (he's also a novelist) and I both wrote fanfic, and he wrote A LOT of it.   Probably a million words.

MAGGIE: How did you know (each time) that your novels were DONE? In particular the first time, when you decided to start querying?

ERIN: I committed a terrible terrible querying sin, actually:  I queried on an incomplete manuscript.

In my defense, it's not quite that simple: I queried on picturebooks and mentioned that I also wrote YA, and had two manuscripts in progress.  The agent said:  "The picturebooks, not so much, but could I see the YA?"  I said:  "Well, PART of them."  She read part of them and said:  "Can I see this the second it's done?"  My second book, Sorrow's Knot,  sold as an unspecified "book two" when I sold Plain Kate; I acquired a deadline before I even had a draft.  So, learning when a thing is "done" is not yet a skill I have had to have.

It is, though, one I urgently need to develop.

Just now I am faced with a big revision letter Sorrow's Knot.  Because of my deadline, I sent my editor a draft that, though a long long way from a first draft, was not yet as good as I knew I could make it.  I had ideas for things I wanted to change to make it better, but I felt I didn't have time to pull the manuscript apart and try them.   And now I have those leftover ideas for changes, along with my editor's ideas and concerns, and it's hard to see where and how to pull those two things together.  I have totally lost the steam and the thread, and am in general finding this very hard.

In the future, I'm going to live by this rule:  I will pass on a book when I have made it as good as I can.  Not sentence by sentence good -- one could noodle endlessly.  Maybe not even paragraph my paragraph good.  But when I'm out of big ideas, ideas like "tighten this chapter" "change that character from a friend to a sister" "ditch that subplot altogether" --- when I've sorted through all those ideas, I'll be ready to let the book go.   


(Happy side lesson:  you can commit the cardinal sin of query letters  -- querying on an unfinished manuscript -- and still end up with a hot shot agent and an eventual six figure deal.  Queries are worth stressing over, but the writing itself will out.)

MAGGIE: Do you listen to music while you write?


ERIN: Most of the time.  Each of my books has an iPod playlist, and those 20 or so songs get played to DEATH.  For Plain Kate, I mostly listened to this moody Norwegian fiddle-driven folk group, Bukkene Bruse.  This, for instance, is the Plain Kate theme song. Cheery, huh?  But beautiful, and puts me right into the fog and birch trees and grandness of the story.

My current novel in draft takes place in a future where they've lost the suburbs, the cars, and (apparently) the electric guitar.  There's a lot of bluegrass going on there.  I never did find quite the right music for Sorrow's Knot, which may be part of my problem as I struggle to crack it back open.

MAGGIE: Awesome! Music rocks (I just LOVE the song! It's beautiful!). Most of us here at Write On! aren't agented or published authors yet. Is being a published author as wonderful as it seems?


ERIN: I suppose that depends on how wonderful it seems!

The best part, far and away, is that people are actually reading the book.  I had two big dreams for Plain Kate.  One was that it would be THAT book for someone, the book they fell in love with as a young person and read over and over, a book that really stuck.  It's too early to say if that's true, but the people who love it really seem to love it, so I have hopes.  The second dream was that someone would adopt a pound kitty and name him Taggle -- and I learned recently that someone did.

There are hard parts too.  I've always wanted to make a living writing, and I'm hugely privileged and thrilled to get to do so (more or less: I recently got a part-time job that was too cool to turn down, and stopped taking in freelance stuff).  But it is a bit tricky getting paid once every 18 month or so.  And it is hard not to put your heart on the line, you know?  Hard not to take all the reviews and reactions personally.  Hard not to feel like a failure when you're asked to revise, which of course happens over and over in the course of making a novel.  Hard not to feel like a fraud on the days when writing doesn't go well, which is frankly most days.

But then there are days when you actually create something -- when something actually comes to life.  There's nothing like that.  Few greater joys in the world, and I say that as someone with a lot of joys: a happy love affair turned long marriage, a couple of fabulous kids, the kitchen, the garden ....  Writing is the equal of any of these.

MAGGIE: Favorite books (and authors)? 


ERIN: At this point I'll confine myself to YA and not tell you about my obsession with cookbooks or that I think Mary Oliver is a poetry god.

My THAT books books -- the ones I read young and keep returning to -- include The Lord of the Rings, The Last Unicorn, and The Wizard of Earthsea.  I think if you were to mix those books together you might get something like Plain Kate.

Let's see, though, the best handful of YA books I've read in the last few years might include Meg Rosoff's How I Live Now, Geraldine McCaughrean's The White Darkness, Sarah Rees Brennan's The Demon's Lexicon, Jandy Nelson's The Sky is Everywhere, Lauren Oliver's Before I Fall ...  I'm sure there are others that just aren't snapping to mind.  


MAGGIE: Three reasons why you love being a writer?


ERIN: 

1. Because geekily researching weird stuff like, say, the ethnobotany of the North American prairies makes me happy.
2. Because writing itself, word by word, makes me happy.
3. Because I'm not particularly good at anything else.

MAGGIE: Chocolate or vanilla? 


ERIN: Chocolate!  Dark chocolate with orange and chilli.  Or caramel and fluer de sel.

MAGGIE: Excellent choice! And to wrap things up, what is the best advice you can give to an aspiring teen author?


ERIN: First, God bless you.

Second, listen: Everyone is going to tell you that this is not a good way to make a living, and everyone is right. Be prepared to keep your day job. Be prepared to eat lentils. Be prepared to keep your day job and lentils, because your developing tendency to gaze at the wall and talk to fictional people may make you unemployable anywhere better than Burger King.

But do it anyway. If you really want to, do it anyway.

Start now. Read everything. Fill notebooks with stories or just with compost -- you'll need a lot of compost to grow a few good stories.  Finish at least some of what you start: poems, stories, whatever.  Edit and make them as good as you can make them. Find someone to share them with -- a few someones, maybe other writers, people you can both learn from and teach. People you can lean on and really trust. And then maybe think about publication. But even if you don't publish -- and many don't -- write. Because you want to. Out of love. Write, write, write.


MAGGIE: Thank you so much for doing this! You've been awesome.


And to the rest of you at Write On!, if you haven't already, go grab yourself a copy of Plain Kate! Trust me, it's worth it.

On Mermaids, Voice, and The Writing Life: HÉLÈNE BOUDREAU

Are you ready to learn a few things about Hélène Boudreau, author of the lighthearted modern fantasy, Real Mermaids Don't Wear Toe Rings?

Get ready for an awesome interview. Hélène is about as sweet as they come, and she's shared some GREAT INSIGHT on how to make your characters come to life.  Which is something she's terribly good at.

AUTHORESS: Real Mermaids Don't Wear Toe Rings isn’t your first book. Tell us what else you have written!

HÉLÈNE: You’re right! Real Mermaids Don’t Wear Toe Rings is actually my eighth published book. I also have a junior chapter book series called Red Dune Adventures and a middle-grade time travel novel called Acadian Star, plus five non-fiction books.

AUTHORESS: I REALLY enjoyed Mermaids. From the very first page, when Jade’s in the bathtub and discovers she’s grown a—well, you know—I was immediately rooting for her. How do you DO that? How do you make Jade so real and so RIGHT INSIDE MY HEAD?

HÉLÈNE:  That’s cool! I’m so glad you related to Jade! I really wanted her to be an every- day teen readers could relate to, despite her extraordinary circumstances.

As for making her seem like she is ‘RIGHT INSIDE MY HEAD’ well…I can share a couple of techniques I use when creating a character. These are tips you can use to bridge the gap between the reader and the point-of-view character.


1. Creating a relatable character: Jade is not the perfect size 6 pretty girl. She has a weakness for chocolate and one foot constantly in her mouth when talking to her crush. I don’t know about you but I can relate on all those fronts. When a reader can see themselves reflected in a character in this way, they’re more likely to root for their success.


2. Creating an identifiable character: Have you ever had to buy something embarrassing at the drugstore? Or been mortified by a parent? Or had to keep a secret from a friend? These are situations with which most people can identify. It’s like saying ‘yes, I totally get that’ while the character is going through those situations. These identifiable situations help the reader feel invested in your character.


3. Using sensory detail: By engaging as many senses as possible, through the eyes of the point-of-view character, your reader becomes much more immersed in the character’s persona. If the reader can sense what the character sees, hears, tastes, smells and feels it’s almost like they are climbing inside the mind of the character and taking on that persona. Injecting sensory detail like this through the narrative of the story gives dimension to your character and engages your reader on a deep level.

AUTHORESS:  You’ve recently signed a deal for two more Mermaid books (hooray!). Can you give us a tiny hint about what’s to come? Or at least let us know how long we have to wait!

HÉLÈNE:  Book 2 will be out in spring 2012. We haven’t seen the last of the Freshies and the Mer-council and Jade, Cori, Trey, Lainey or Serena, for that matter. There will be plenty more embarrassing moments for Jade, too. I haven’t finished torturing her just yet. ;-)

AUTHORESS: So you’ve managed to create a believable, very “today” mermaid story. What was your inspiration?

HÉLÈNE:  The setting for the story was based on a town near where I grew up in Nova Scotia, Canada. We used to take boat trips there with my dad when I was a kid. You can actually sail from the ocean, up a canal and through a boat lock and into a lake, just like the setting of the story. I was always amazed by the purple jelly fish on the ocean side of the boat lock compared to the white jelly fish in the lake. It always made me wonder how different it would be to live in a lake compared to the ocean. That was the inspiration for my underwater mer-world in Real Mermaids Don’t Wear Toe Rings.

Jade’s character was mostly me getting in touch with my inner dork. I could totally see myself doing a lot of the things she did; fumbling her words while talking to a cute guy or sending a cooler full of Gatorade careening into space.


Her geeky, gadget-loving dad was fun to write too, since I based a lot of his character on my husband. I had a lot of fun debating with him about how similar they were; whether he would Google ‘menstruation’ in the middle of the pharmacy while buying feminine hygiene products for one of our daughters, like Jade’s dad did, or whether he’s capable of driving and carrying on a conversation at the same time. It confirmed for me how ‘adorkable’ my husband is and how appealing that can be in a character as well.

AUTHORESS:  Mermaids is a middle grade novel. How is that different from young adult? What made you decide to write for this age group?

HÉLÈNE:  I wasn’t consciously trying to write a middle grade versus a young adult book. I mainly wanted to tell a story from the perspective of a thirteen year-old girl who feels like she’s being left behind by friends who are developing faster than she is. It was hard to find a category to classify this book since it kind of bridges the middle grade/ young adult gap but I just tried to tell as honest a story as possible and hoped it would find its readers.

AUTHORESS:  You are represented by the lovely Lauren MacLeod of the Strothman Agency. Can you share some highlights from your how-I-nabbed-my- awesome-agent story?

HÉLÈNE:  People talk about their ‘dream agent’ but what I truly wanted was an agent who knew the market, was enthusiastic about my writing and could direct my career.


I got that +++ when I finally connected with Lauren. I had queried quite a few agents before stumbling on a blog by Mitali Perkins where Lauren discussed her likes and dislikes. She mentioned she was looking for clean/ funny/ middle grade/ leaning toward commercial manuscripts and I thought ‘Hey! That sounds like my book. ’


You can read what Lauren thought of my query on the Guide to Literary Agent
blog HERE.

AUTHORESS:  You’re, like, a mom. How does that work? When do you get your best writing done?

HÉLÈNE:  I always marvel at people who say they can only write in the morning or late at night or at the coffee shop. Being a parent doesn’t always afford such luxuries. I usually end up writing whenever and wherever I can! I’ve been known to sneak in a bit of revision while the girls are at art class or take my laptop with me while they play in the park. This is killer on my keyboard, though, and I usually have to get out the hi-pressure air every week or so to blow out the leaves and playground sand from between the keys.

AUTHORESS:  If I’m 14 or 15 or 17 and I’m writing my first novel, what’s your best-ever advice?

HÉLÈNE:  My advice for aspiring authors is this—anything is possible! This is true in a book and in real life. In writing, don’t be afraid to take risks! Make your characters squirm, put them in impossible situations, go down the road less travelled. The same goes for your writing life. Take risks, be brave and don’t be afraid to fail. You can always go back and revise.


Conceive it, believe it and achieve it.

AUTHORESS:  So many drafts, edits, revisions. How did you know when Mermaids was actually DONE? How do you know when ANYTHING is done?

HÉLÈNE:  It’s hard to know when it’s absolutely done but it helps to have a good team of critiquers to help along the way. I put my early drafts of Mermaids through my rigorous critique group for over six months. Then, I did 3-4 rounds of beta-reads with some trusted readers. While I was querying agents I did 2-3 major revisions. When I signed with my agent I did another revision. When the manuscript was acquired I did a large-scale revision and then a smaller content-type revision. Then finally, a copy-edit at the very end. At some point with each book I need to let go, put my trust in the process and let it be the book it was meant to be.

AUTHORESS: Do you listen to music when you write?

HÉLÈNE: I love Top 40 music so I usually have it playing in the background while I write. It can’t be too loud, though, or I find it distracting. Writing with earbuds, with the volume on super-low tends to work best for me. Just enough to block out the universe but not too much so that I feel the need to rock out with my very shaky rendition of ‘Soul Sister’.

AUTHORESS:  Is it true you’ve recently stopped drinking Diet Coke forever?

HÉLÈNE:  *slurp* “Huh? Oh…yeah, definitely. What was the question?” *wipes chin*

AUTHORESS: Is being a Real Author as awesome as it seems?

HÉLÈNE:  Being an author and having books published is absolutely awesome and I feel grateful every day that I get to do what I love for a living. It’s not without its challenges and it is definitely a LOT of work but I wouldn’t trade it for anything.

AUTHORESS:  Chocolate or vanilla? Coffee or tea? Summer or winter?

HÉLÈNE:  Vanilla. Neither. SUMMER!!!!! Flip-flops!!!!

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HOORAY!  Thank you, Ms. Boudreau, for a fabulous interview.

And guess what's next?  A contest to win a book-plate signed copy of Real Mermaids Don't Wear Toe Rings!

WHEN: The contest will open TOMORROW AT 3:00 PM EST, so check the blog!

WHAT: Why, thinking up titles for Hélène's next two Mermaid novels, of course! The funniest entry will win.

WHERE: Right here on the blog! All entries will go into the comments box.

Spread the word! And see what fabulous titles you can come up with. YOU might be Write On's very first give-away winner!

Heads Up: What This Week Will Bring!

The Write On community is off to a great start! Lizzy informs me that your first official chat was a success, though she hopes more of you will join in next time.  Please be sure to check out the poll on the forums and let Lizzy know what time will work best for YOU! (This multiple-time-zone thing is definitely a challenge.)

Anyway!  This is your official YOU DON'T WANT TO MISS THIS blog announcement.  Here's what the rest of this week has in store for you:

• An amazing interview with HÉLÈNE BOUDREAU, author of Real Mermaids Don't Wear Toe Rings.  (Yes, I've read it. Yes, it's a really fun, gotta-turn-the-pages book for the 10-and-up set. Yes, you want to read it, too.)
• Our FIRST CONTEST!  The prize: A book-plate signed copy of Real Mermaids Don't Wear Toe Rings.
• A special ASK HÉLÈNE thread on the forums!  Details TBA.

 So make sure you're around.  Hanging out with a published author is exactly what you need to be doing.  Don't miss this!