GIVEAWAY INCLUDED: Kim is giving away a signed copy of her book with this post!

My big turning point came at a time when I hated my main character. Even worse, I hated myself for creating her. My debut novel, Trafficked, is about a girl named Hannah who comes from Moldova to LA to be a nanny and ends up a modern-day domestic slave. When I first started writing the novel, I really liked Hannah. She came to me as this sarcastic, funny, kind soul, but then, even though I thought she was pretty neat, I decided this just wouldn’t do.

She was a victim. Any person who’d been trafficked and enslaved would have to be weak, right? I wanted to be “realistic.” So I made her into this frightened, weepy character, and then I sent her down a path of misery during which one thing after another would befall her. Oh, your life doesn’t suck enough, yet? How about this? I felt like I was beating an injured horse.

After a few years of writing, I no longer liked her at all and I didn’t know what to do. I’d made her into this person that made you cringe. When I brought her to my writing group, they said, well, it’s good writing, but will readers want to stick with this miserable story for three hundred pages?

I felt defensive. There were plenty of miserable stories out there. People loved them. Some of my favorite stories were miserable stories: Angela’s Ashes, Invisible Man, The Lovely Bones. There was nothing wrong with a miserable story.

But then, I sat down with my miserable story and I felt miserable. I thought it was shit. I didn’t know why. I’m not normally overly critical about my writing. I generally believe that if I keep writing, it will get better. The problem was that after two, three, four years, I still wasn’t feeling the magic.

Writing became a chore. It was an important story, I told myself. I had to keep going. But every time I sat down with my character, it just felt like a bummer. Her life was so awful, I couldn’t stand it.

So, I decided I was going to quit the book. I switched to another novel-in-progress, but I kept thinking about Hannah and how I’d abandoned her and not just her— by not telling this story, I’d abandoned all the people who are enslaved around the world. That made me feel even shittier. What kind of person does that?

I talked to my husband and my writing group. They told me to keep going with it, that they liked the story and they believed I could do it. So I returned to the story, rewrote it a couple more times, and somehow, miraculously landed a fabulous literary agent. I could not believe it. That was it, I thought. I’d sell it and be done with the miserable thing.

The thing that I didn’t know was that I was far from done with it. My agent and I went through a couple rewrites and she sent it out to the first round of editors. They found it too bleak. A couple of the editors didn’t like my main character. I felt ill. I didn’t like her either. I mean, she was okay, but I wouldn’t want to be her friend. It was a dark night of the soul. Either I had to admit defeat, or I had to rewrite from scratch. After five years of working on the novel, which I was sick of, rewriting it from scratch sounded like hell.

And then, a little voice in my head chirped, “But what if you put more of yourself into her?” What if she was someone who could be a friend? What if she was not weak, but strong? What if I let her be that sarcastic, funny, kind soul she started out as? And then terrible things happened to her? How much of her humor would she hold on to? How much of her kindness?

This was the big turning point for me. The novel became interesting to me again. I decided if I was going to rewrite Hannah, I had to get rid of the distance between my character and myself. I couldn’t be safe. I had to be able to inhabit the character in order to care for her and make readers care for her. I had to de-victimize her and make her a survivor.

Over the next year, I rewrote the novel from scratch, keeping the basic plot, but changing the character and her reactions to everything that happened. While I wrote, I thought of all the girls and women I met in Moldova. I thought of the nannies and housekeepers and immigrants I’d interviewed here in America. They were smart, funny, and determined to live in a vibrant way, despite everything that had happened to them, and I put their collective spirit into Hannah.

Not once was I bored, depressed, or disheartened. I was on a journey and when it was finished, at last, I felt proud of the work I’d done. My agent and I were ready to send it out again. I felt like I was at last linking arms with Hannah and walking with her to her next destination, instead of tossing her at the first editor who’d take her off my hands and relieve me of the burden.

A few days later, I was on the F train, heading to Brooklyn from Manhattan. I was talking about the book with some friends. I spoke passionately about Hannah and her story, and while I talked, I noticed a woman watching me a few seats over. I had no idea, but this woman was an editor at Penguin. She got off the train at my stop—we lived close to one another at the time—and she said, “Excuse me.” She said she was sorry for eavesdropping, but she was an editor and she’d love to read my novel. She handed me her card. I looked down at the card, which read Penguin. I couldn’t believe it. I sent it to her and Viking bought it a few days later.

Now, just this month, the book has come out. Hannah’s story will be heard. The story of slaves across America will be heard. And none of this would have happened if I hadn’t been willing to rewrite from scratch and allow Hannah to be strong in order for her story to come alive.

—Kim Purcell

Kim Purcell is a novelist, journalist and teacher. As a radio beat reporter, she interviewed drug dealers, prostitutes, and murderers and became interested in the trauma many of them experienced as children and teenagers. She wanted to tell their stories in a more complex way, and decided to focus on writing novels while teaching English as a Second Language. She wrote two novels before Trafficked. After hearing the painful stories some of her immigrant students shared with her, she became interested in the subject of human trafficking and modern-day slavery. She traveled to Moldova, the poorest country in Europe, to research this book. She had two babies and wrote it mostly when her two wonderful daughters were napping. She loves to run, do yoga, and dance in random places, like elevators. Sometimes her husband and kids stop her and sometimes they join in. They all live in Westchester County, near New York City, with their rescue dog, Lola.

Visit Kim at www.kimpurcell.com.

Follow @kimberlypurcell on Twitter. 

ENTER TO WIN A SIGNED COPY OF TRAFFICKED:

If you fill out the below entry form, you will be ENTERED TO WIN a signed copy of Trafficked by Kim Purcell, which just came out this month! And if you’re a librarian or a teacher with a classroom library, you get extra chances to win!

GIVEAWAY RULES: 

1. You must fill out the entry form to enter. 
2. If you comment on this post, you get +1 extra entry and an extra chance to win! 
3. If you tweet about this giveaway or share it online, you get +1 extra entry and an extra chance to win!
4. Librarians and teachers with classroom libraries! If you are a librarian or a teacher who would share the prize with your teens, you also get extra chances to win… just note that in the form.
5. This giveaway is open in the US and Canada only. You must have a mailing address in the US or Canada to enter.
6. This giveaway closes at 5pm EST on Friday, March 2.

ENTER HERE:

Thank you, Kim, for donating your book for a giveaway!

Want more in this blog series?

The Turning Points series will continue with new guest posts three times a week. Subscribe to distraction no. 99 to keep up with the series, or read all the posts with this tag.

Here are the posts in the series so far:

• Intro to the Turning Points blog series
• Gayle Forman: on overcoming bitterness
• Sean Ferrell: on the Writer who never arrives
• Eileen Cook: on a “nasty” book and a teacher’s advice that inspired her
• Christopher Barzak: on how short stories changed his vision for his novel
• Saundra Mitchell: on deciding to quit and walk away
• Eric Luper: on not writing for trends
• Gretchen McNeil: on how “everything happens for a reason”
• Julia DeVillers on the life-changing fan letter she wrote when she was ten
• Daisy Whitney on the book that opened her eyes to writing YA
• Brandy Colbert on the book that inspired her to find her voice
• Courtney Summers on redefining failure
• Sarah Darer Littman on turning off the noise
• Léna Roy on how she came to call herself a “writer”
• Megan Crewe on not choosing the “right” path
• Jennifer Echols on her eighth anniversary of not being stupid
• Blythe Woolston on how she accidentally became a writer
• Karen Mahoney on the discouraging moment that kept her from showing her writing for years (giveaway open through Feb. 24!)
• Steve Brezenoff on how facing both death and birth became a turning point for his writing (giveaway open through Feb. 27!)
  
• Christine Lee Zilka on how she fought to keep writing after a stroke at age 33 (giveaway open through Feb. 29!)

You can keep up with all the open giveaways on the giveaways page!

Series images by Robert Roxby.

GIVEAWAY INCLUDED: Christine is giving away a copy of the anthology in which her novel excerpt appears!

I have had many turning points as a writer, some more dramatic than others, each bringing a unique encouraging message.

I remember my first litmag acceptance from ZYZZYVA for the first piece of fiction I’d ever written; it was a sign for me to pursue this long-subjugated dream.

I remember my first novel workshop with VL, the one in which I began writing my novel. I wasn’t sure I had a novel in me, but by the end of the semester, I had 100 fresh pages. I’ve thrown out all 100 pages since, but the core of the idea remains and flourishes years later.

I remember JD who doesn’t pull punches telling me, “You should be proud. You’re almost there” after reading the opening chapters of my novel-in-progress this past summer. The ensuing discussion made it so I could see the light at the end of the novel-in-progress tunnel. I was so inspired. I got my second wind.

But no turning point has been so life-changing and incredible as the time during which I had zero writing achievements, when I was unable to write fiction, let alone read a novel for two years. It was then that I knew I would do everything in my being to be able to write again, and that I would never give up on my novel.

I had a stroke on December 31, 2006, at the age of 33. Amidst the festivities of New Year’s Eve, no one thought much of the fact that I appeared quiet and spacey. I’d had the weirdest migraine of my life earlier that day in the parking lot of a South Lake Tahoe shopping center; the world tilted 90 degrees and every object doubled. If I were to write an imagist poem about that moment, I’d write about the twinned red snow blowers lined up in the snow outside a hardware store.

My husband says I complained of an enormous migraine-level headache, but I don’t remember pain. I remember disorientation and wonder and sudden exhaustion. What was happening? I should say something, but what is it I could say? What were words? What was language? I felt like my Self was buried under a thousand layers of cotton blankets.

It wasn’t until we got back down from the mountains a day later that we realized that something was seriously wrong. I couldn’t remember my way home from the neighborhood grocery store and I couldn’t process the labels on the shelves of the store and I couldn’t remember my husband’s phone number when I decided that perhaps I needed to go to the hospital. I wondered what the phone number for 911 might be.

At the hospital lying in bed my neurologist told me that I had had a stroke.

My stroke didn’t affect my body—I didn’t limp and my face didn’t slide like melted wax. I looked completely normal. My stroke had occurred in the left thalamus, the mysterious “hub” of the brain, and it among other things, the stroke affected my short-term memory, my coping mechanisms, and it affected my ability to retrieve memories, spin language, and weave stories.

In short, I was Dory the Fish in Finding Nemo.

My doctors told me to keep a journal as my memory bank—to write every happening inside the journal and to timestamp each entry. It was my physical short-term memory repository (and it worked a lot better than tattooing things on my body a la “Memento Mori”).

That Moleskine journal saved my life.

I was determined to “come back like Lance (Armstrong)” and I wrote my feelings and happenings in my Moleskine every single day. I often slept 20 hours a day. My waking hours felt like what healthy people feel like in the first few minutes after waking up in the morning; hazy and not quite present. In the first months, it took me two of my four waking hours to compose three paragraphs. But I wrote them.

I was convinced that if I kept writing, my brain would heal and make me a stronger writer. That I’d come out of this better than before. That somehow the synapses in my brain would synthesize a new and better writer. (Cue Six Million Dollar Man theme music).

Several months into my recovery, I was well enough to comprehend my situation. And yes, I cried. Yes, I got depressed. I would pick up books, and find myself reading the same paragraph over and over and over because by the end of the paragraph, I’d forgotten what had happened, so I’d keep reading and forgetting.

At around the year mark, my doctors told me “I was cured.” I was not cured, I told them. I couldn’t write fiction. How was this cured? Most of my doctors and therapists shrugged with a shadow of pity behind their eyes. My neurologist said I would keep improving, but this was, he said, as far as most doctors would go.

I was functional. I could hold a conversation. I couldn’t balance a checkbook, but I could get money out of the ATM and I could pay for my purchases. I could read People magazine, and I could even read a short story by then. I could go on drives and remember where I’d parked my car and find my way back home, but I couldn’t yet read a novel.

My stroke helped me to realize that the one thing I wanted to do more than anything else, was to write. My marker for “being cured,” was not what the doctors designated. It was not being able to function in life. It was not what my friends designated, which was to appear normal and be able to participate in discussions. My marker for being alive was to be able to write fiction again. To write my novel.

It took two years before I could look at my novel, and imagine worlds again. Two years before I stopped flipping homonyms in my writing. Two years before my prose became more than pedestrian.

I’m not sure if my brain, as I’d hoped, formed new synapses such that they made me a better writer—but I’m most certainly a more determined writer. And that has made all the difference. There is a black spot in my brain now, and it will always be there, near the center of my brain. And I consider that my writing birthmark.

Christine, about to read an excerpt from her novel at the Sunday Salon reading series this past November. (I was there! She was fantastic!)

It took years before I could remember this experience as a cohesive narrative. And while most writers don’t have strokes at the age of 33, I don’t think my experience is all too unique, because many of us have been kept from our writing in one way or another in our crazy writing lives. It could be a year away from writing as you raise a new baby, or a year away from writing as you immerse yourself in financially-necessary work, or a year away from writing because your writing just breaks your heart and you just can’t look at it anymore. Maybe you were really sick and couldn’t write. But sometimes, it is that very time away that forms the negative space around your identity and determination and your writing. When you come back, you know who you are, more than ever. And who you are is a writer to the core.

—Christine Lee Zilka

Christine Lee Zilka is the Editor-at-Large at Kartika Review. Her work has appeared in journals and anthologies such as ZYZZYVA, Verbsap, Yomimono, and Men Undressed: Women Authors Write About Male Sexual Experience. She was awarded a residency at Hedgebrook in 2006, placed as a finalist in Poets and Writers Magazine’s Writers Exchange Contest in 2007, and received an honorable mention in Glimmer Train’s Fiction Open in 2009. She has a novel-in-progress.

Read Christine’s blog 80,000 Words at czilka.wordpress.com.

Follow @czilka on Twitter. 

ENTER TO WIN THE ANTHOLOGY WHERE CHRISTINE’S NOVEL EXCERPT APPEARED!

If you fill out the below entry form, you will be ENTERED TO WIN the anthology Men Undressed: Women Writers on the Male Sexual Experience, edited by Gina Frangello, Stacy Bierlein, Cris Mazza and Kat Meads, with a foreword by Steve Almond, and featuring writers Aimee Bender, Jennifer Egan, Susan Minot, A.M. Homes, Christine Lee Zilka, and more. The novel Christine talks about in this post is excerpted in this anthology!

(This is probably obvious from the title, but this is not a YA anthology. The content is very sexy!) 

GIVEAWAY RULES: 

1. You must fill out the entry form to enter. 
2. If you comment on this post, you get +1 extra entry and an extra chance to win! 
3. If you tweet about this giveaway or share it online, you get +1 extra entry and an extra chance to win!
4. This giveaway is open in the US only. You must have a mailing address in the US to enter.
5. This giveaway closes at 5pm EST on Wednesday, February 29.

ENTER HERE:

Thank you, Christine, for donating the anthology for a giveaway!

Want more in this blog series?

The Turning Points series will continue with new guest posts three times a week. Subscribe to distraction no. 99 to keep up with the series, or read all the posts with this tag.

Here are the posts in the series so far:

• Intro to the Turning Points blog series
• Gayle Forman: on overcoming bitterness
• Sean Ferrell: on the Writer who never arrives
• Eileen Cook: on a “nasty” book and a teacher’s advice that inspired her
• Christopher Barzak: on how short stories changed his vision for his novel
• Saundra Mitchell: on deciding to quit and walk away
• Eric Luper: on not writing for trends
• Gretchen McNeil: on how “everything happens for a reason”
• Julia DeVillers on the life-changing fan letter she wrote when she was ten
• Daisy Whitney on the book that opened her eyes to writing YA
• Brandy Colbert on the book that inspired her to find her voice
• Courtney Summers on redefining failure
• Sarah Darer Littman on turning off the noise
• Léna Roy on how she came to call herself a “writer”
• Megan Crewe on not choosing the “right” path
• Jennifer Echols on her eighth anniversary of not being stupid
• Blythe Woolston on how she accidentally became a writer (giveaway open through Feb. 23!)
• Karen Mahoney on the discouraging moment that kept her from showing her writing for years (giveaway open through Feb. 24!)
• Steve Brezenoff on how facing both death and birth became a turning point for his writing (giveaway open through Feb. 27!)
  

You can keep up with all the open giveaways on the giveaways page!

Series images by Robert Roxby.

So yeah it’s my birthday this Thursday (and E’s birthday today! and the anniversary of the day we went to City Hall and got married tomorrow!), and I know I should want to do something special for my birthday to kick off the year, but all I can think about now is this revision. I dream the revision. I wake up and the first thing I think about is the revision. I work on the revision all day. I read only things related to the revision (and I had to stop reading novels I really want to read to avoid distracting from the revision). I look at things that remind me of the revision. Guess what I want to do on my birthday? Work on the revision. Then go to dinner after. Then probably go home and work more on the revision. Thankfully the blog series is still running, or this blog would be a big blank space until the revision is handed in, or possibly a live feed of me sitting in front of my laptop, making faces, typing furiously, rearranging things AGAIN (and oh how I regret abandoning Scrivener now), editing, re-editing, adding more pages, aaaaaah! It would not be pretty. Even so, I love doing this. Isn’t that sick? Revision is the best part of writing, in my opinion, but that doesn’t mean it’s easy. It’s so rewarding precisely because it’s not easy. Going back in.

GIVEAWAY INCLUDED: Steve is giving away a paperback edition of his debut YA novel to one winner!

My first novel was a long time coming. I’ve often said it took fourteen years to finish, but that’s mildly disingenuous. I didn’t labor over the thing for all those years. Instead I attacked it in fits and starts, driven not by some urge to finish a novel, but instead by an urge to get some scenes on paper—catharsis. In the fourteen years in question, I started many short stories and several other novels. I even finished one novel, a derivative middle-grade fantasy. The truth is I always fancied myself a middle-grade writer. I looked up to Lloyd Alexander, C. S. Lewis, and Susan Cooper. The novel I’d been fooling with since college—the one that would become The Absolute Value of -1—was a diversion.

Two turning points changed that, and they’re the Big Two: death and birth. If one was a creative impetus, the other was the great pragmatic motivator.

The Absolute Value of -1 was based on a short story I’d written in college. It was about a boy obsessed with two things: death and family, particularly his older sister, off at college. Whenever I approached the novel-in-progress (or whatever you’d call a collection of random scenes with no plot or end in sight), I’d stab out another scene in a violent fit. The sum was definitely not greater than the parts at this point, so I’d retreat again to think about some or other middle-grade project I thought I should be focusing on instead.

Then my father died. Suddenly the boy in my story, who’d often dwelled on his grandfather’s death, was about to get hit with the most difficult event of his fifteen years: his father would get cancer and die. It had to be. After all, this novel was my diversion. Where better to deal with the emotional destruction I was facing in real life? Certainly not a derivative middle-grade fantasy novel. (Full disclosure: my middle-grade work betrayed my real-life crisis at this point as well, with the protagonists in two distinct works-in-progress dealing with missing or otherwise suffering fathers.)

The protagonist of The Absolute Value of -1, Simon, tore through the rest of his story, with a little help from me, and before long I had a tidy little novella. One editor I worked with enjoyed the voice and liked what I had down. She even gave me an editor letter. It was a big deal. Even so, the not-a-novel-yet sat in a digital drawer, stagnant, because while Simon and his story had finally found their thrust, I still didn’t have mine. And that’s where the second turning point comes in.

I didn’t touch Simon’s story again for some time. I had no big ideas on how to make it a real novel, and no good reason to do so. After all, though I now saw that YA was a viable format for me, I still favored middle-grade. I dabbled over the next couple of years with one middle-grade trilogy in particular, outlining it, writing scenes, sketching characters—both in words and drawings. In those couple of years, I’d also started writing work-for-hire chapter books. They weren’t quite middle-grade, but they were damn close. Things seemed to be moving along, albeit slowly and without a lot of passion in the work.

Then my son was born. Here was this new little person. He would come to depend on me, look up to me, ask me for things like food and a home. If I didn’t begin to take my writing career seriously right then and there, it was never going to happen at all.

In the same way the death of my father had lent gravity to my story, and therefore to Simon’s story, my son’s birth added urgency to my goals and gave me a sound kick in the rear. I joined a professional organization, met another editor who liked Simon’s novella, and—most importantly—found the time and did the work necessary to turn that novella into a full-fledged novel.

—Steve Brezenoff

Steve Brezenoff has written dozens of chapter books for young readers, and The Absolute Value of -1 is his first novel for teens. His second, Brooklyn, Burning, came out in fall of 2011. Though Steve grew up in a suburb on Long Island, he now lives with his wife, their son, and their terrier in St. Paul, Minnesota.

Visit Steve at www.stevebrezenoff.com.

Follow @sbrezenoff on Twitter.

ENTER TO WIN STEVE’S DEBUT YA NOVEL!

If you fill out the below entry form, you will be ENTERED TO WIN a signed paperback edition of Steve Brezenoff’s debut YA novel, The Absolute Value of -1. And if you’re a librarian or a teacher with a classroom library, you get extra chances to win!

GIVEAWAY RULES: 

1. You must fill out the entry form to enter. 
2. If you comment on this post, you get +1 extra entry and an extra chance to win! 
3. If you tweet about this giveaway or share it online, you get +1 extra entry and an extra chance to win!
4. Librarians and teachers with classroom libraries! If you are a librarian or a teacher who would share the prize with your teens, you also get extra chances to win… just note that in the form.
5. This giveaway is open in the US and Canada only. You must have a mailing address in the US or Canada to enter.
6. This giveaway closes at 5pm EST on Monday, February 27.

ENTER HERE:

Thank you, Steve, for donating your book for a giveaway!

Want more in this blog series?

The Turning Points series will continue with new guest posts three times a week. Subscribe to distraction no. 99 to keep up with the series, or read all the posts with this tag.

Here are the posts in the series so far:

• Intro to the Turning Points blog series
• Gayle Forman: on overcoming bitterness
• Sean Ferrell: on the Writer who never arrives
• Eileen Cook: on a “nasty” book and a teacher’s advice that inspired her
• Christopher Barzak: on how short stories changed his vision for his novel
• Saundra Mitchell: on deciding to quit and walk away
• Eric Luper: on not writing for trends
• Gretchen McNeil: on how “everything happens for a reason”
• Julia DeVillers on the life-changing fan letter she wrote when she was ten
• Daisy Whitney on the book that opened her eyes to writing YA
• Brandy Colbert on the book that inspired her to find her voice
• Courtney Summers on redefining failure
• Sarah Darer Littman on turning off the noise
• Léna Roy on how she came to call herself a “writer”
• Megan Crewe on not choosing the “right” path
• Jennifer Echols on her eighth anniversary of not being stupid
• Blythe Woolston on how she accidentally became a writer (giveaway open through Feb. 23!)
• Karen Mahoney on the discouraging moment that kept her from showing her writing for years (giveaway open through Feb. 24!)

You can keep up with all the open giveaways on the giveaways page!

Series images by Robert Roxby.

Mainly: to inspire myself to keep my head in the writing.

Soon after, my 17 & Gone inspiration board was born (click the image to go to the board on Pinterest):

As I said there, it’s a collection of images that connect, however subtly, to the novel I’m revising now, 17 & Gone, which is due out from Dutton/Penguin in 2013. I haven’t said too much publicly about what this novel is about, and we haven’t released a summary yet. But if you’re curious? If you liked Imaginary Girls and you want to know what I’m doing next? That inspiration board will give you some hints.

Also on Pinterest, I have an Imaginary Girls board in time for the paperback release (and for a special thing I’m working on that I will tell you about when I can!), an inspiration board for the new novel proposal that’s almost done and it’s a secret except for what you see there, a board of Books That Made Me Who I Am, a board of Awesome Women, on which, of course, I have pinned my amazing mom along with authors and other women I find awe-inspiring, and more.

But for now, I’m opening up my board of 17 & Gone Inspirations and revising away. I’ve found it to be a wonderful trick to keep my head in the world of the novel 24/7, which, knowing what this novel is about, is probably a very creepy experience if you’re living with me right now (sorry, e).

So, yeah. Pinterest? Good for novelists, I say. Any other writers using it to inspire? 

GIVEAWAY INCLUDED: Karen is giving away the book of your choice to one winner!

I am going to talk about two turning points in my writing life.

The first was when I was about twelve. I knew, even then, that I wanted to be an author. I wanted to write books, just like the books I read by the many writers that I loved. I had no idea how I would go about this seemingly impossible task, but I figured that it would involve hard work, determination, lots of reading, and lots of writing. I also hoped there would be some encouragement along the way—perhaps somebody could take me under their wing and tell me that I wasn’t crazy to want this. Maybe I’d find someone who would nurture the tiny spark of talent that I hoped I possessed.

So at twelve years old, I sat in my form room (like the US homeroom) surrounded by my classmates and took part in a Q&A session the teacher was running. We were talking “Careers.” You know, like… What do you want to be when you grow up? There were a few questions, but that was the biggie.

My turn came around too quickly, and I had to push back my chair and stand to answer the miniature questionnaire. My legs were shaking, and even now I remember how nervous I felt being looked at by so many people. (I still feel this way, and am not a natural public speaker.) My teacher came to the question: “So, Karen, what would you like to do when you finally leave school and education behind? What do you want to be?”

I replied: “A writer!” I was very enthusiastic about this, despite my nerves.

My teacher frowned. “You mean, like a reporter? A journalist?”

“No, no.” I shook my head. “Someone who writes books. A fantasy author, actually.”

The entire class (or that’s how it felt to me at the time) burst out laughing.

My teacher joined in. She laughed at my deepest, most cherished dream.

I felt hot and sick. My stomach flipped over and I wondered if I might faint. I remember wishing that the ground really could do that thing where it swallows you up, just so you don’t have to face the people laughing at you for saying something that you can’t even see the humor in. I was stunned. What was so funny? I didn’t get it. To be honest, I still don’t understand what my teacher found so funny about my aspirations. Children will be children, and I don’t blame them for laughing. They probably forgot all about it by the end of the day.

I, on the other hand, had just had my first ever panic attack. The first of many.

Whether I understood the laughter or not, that didn’t really matter. Instead of holding more tightly to my dream, I let it crawl into a dark space and hide away for fear of being mocked by my peers—and by the authority figure who I was supposed to respect.

I did write, throughout my teens, but it was always in secret. I never showed my work to anybody. I didn’t tell people that I was seriously writing stories.

In my twenties I wrote quietly for myself and I started many things, but I never actually finished them. Especially not the longer pieces of work. At the age of 27, I decided that I couldn’t be a writer if I was never willing to share my writing with others. It sounds silly now, perhaps, but I was afraid of being laughed at. I know that’s a big part of what held me back, even 15 years after that stomach-turning morning at school. I asked myself: If I can never talk about this—really talk about it—and I’m never going to show my work, how can I ever be a published writer?

So I gave up. I stopped writing for five years. Well, apart from keeping a journal about my “inner world.” I still have those journals, and most of them talk about my frustration due to my seeming inability to write fiction. Here’s an actual sample (from 2002—please forgive how totally emo I was!):

It is not enough to merely dream about expressing myself without fear, or shame, or limits. It’s not enough to want to find grace and beauty in this chaotic world. I must actually do it, or all this means nothing. There are enough censors in the world, without me joining them and censoring myself. Fear has always been my greatest enemy, but it is a terror that must not be allowed to stop me from being creative.

Being creative is one of the only true freedoms we possess in life. Well, in our society, anyway. It is both a privilege and a freedom. No other person can have quite the same view of things as me. We are individuals, and that fact can be celebrated when we create something that belongs to us. Surely that is something worth pursuing?

Honestly, I have volumes of this stuff! (*grin*)

Five years of this was enough to lead me into a state of total despair that I would ever write fiction again—let along get published. By this time, I’d met someone who I was sort of living with (on and off), and who was getting fed up with my often proclaimed: “Woe! I have wasted my life! I am 32 years old and I work in crappy jobs that don’t make me happy. Whatever shall I dooo?!”

Luckily for me, he (let’s call him “V” for the purpose of this post) didn’t let my whining put him off. Nor did he let it stop him from digging deep and trying to help me pull myself out of my Endless Cycle of Creative Doom. In January 2007, he marched me to the nearest cafe—with my notebook and pen—and sat me down with a coffee. He searched my bag for anything that might distract me (seriously), confiscating a couple of novels and my phone. V told me that I must sit and write for two hours before coming home again.

He left me there to face the blank page—and a ton of fear.

But he was right. He’d been telling me for weeks: “Don’t just cry over spilt milk. So what that you didn’t write for so many years? Who cares? Will continuing to not write help in any way? You have to put that behind you and move forward. Are you going to let your fear hold you back forever?”

I didn’t know what to say, but I wrote for the next two hours. Let that be my answer, I thought.

I scribbled the opening pages to an adult urban fantasy novel (that I never actually completed, but still) and I enjoyed the process. I bounced home and typed up what I had written into my laptop. I started a blog and began making connections in the growing urban fantasy community, and also in the wider YA writing world. My next attempt at a novel was YA—because that’s just the way it came out—and it became The Iron Witch, the book that eventually got me an agent and my first book deal. I had stopped myself from writing for so many years that now I couldn’t stop writing. The floodgates had opened.

It took someone close to me, twenty years after that teacher and my classmates had laughed at me, to bring me to my second turning point: Are you going to let your fear hold you back forever?

I’m so glad he asked me that question—and that my writing provided an answer to it.

—Karen Mahoney

Karen Mahoney is the author of The Iron Witch, the first book in a trilogy that continues in February 2012 with The Wood Queen. She has also published stories about a kick-ass teen vampire called Moth in various anthologies, and there is a Moth novel coming in September 2012 called Falling to Ash. Karen is British and currently lives near London with way too many books and comics, though she dreams of one day living in Boston. She doesn’t mind if you call her Kaz.

Visit Kaz at www.kazmahoney.com.

Follow @kazmahoney on Twitter.

ENTER TO WIN ONE OF KAZ’S BOOKS—YOUR CHOICE!

If you fill out the below entry form, you will be ENTERED TO WIN a signed copy of one of Karen Mahoney’s novels—your choice, depending on if you’ve read book #1 yet, either The Iron Witch or The Wood Queen. And if you’re a librarian or a teacher with a classroom library, you get extra chances to win!

GIVEAWAY RULES: 

1. You must fill out the entry form to enter. 
2. If you comment on this post, you get +1 extra entry and an extra chance to win! 
3. If you tweet about this giveaway or share it online, you get +1 extra entry and an extra chance to win!
4. Librarians and teachers with classroom libraries! If you are a librarian or a teacher who would share the prize with your teens, you also get extra chances to win… just note that in the form.
5. This giveaway is international!
6. This giveaway closes at 5pm EST on Friday, February 24.

ENTER HERE:

Thank you, Kaz, for donating a book for the giveaway!

Want more in this blog series?

The Turning Points series will continue with new guest posts three times a week. Subscribe to distraction no. 99 to keep up with the series, or read all the posts with this tag.

Here are the posts in the series so far:

• Intro to the Turning Points blog series
• Gayle Forman: on overcoming bitterness
• Sean Ferrell: on the Writer who never arrives
• Eileen Cook: on a “nasty” book and a teacher’s advice that inspired her
• Christopher Barzak: on how short stories changed his vision for his novel
• Saundra Mitchell: on deciding to quit and walk away
• Eric Luper: on not writing for trends
• Gretchen McNeil: on how “everything happens for a reason”
• Julia DeVillers on the life-changing fan letter she wrote when she was ten
• Daisy Whitney on the book that opened her eyes to writing YA
• Brandy Colbert on the book that inspired her to find her voice
• Courtney Summers on redefining failure
• Sarah Darer Littman on turning off the noise
• Léna Roy on how she came to call herself a “writer”
• Megan Crewe on not choosing the “right” path
• Jennifer Echols on her eighth anniversary of not being stupid
• Blythe Woolston on how she accidentally became a writer

You can keep up with all the open giveaways on the giveaways page!

Series images by Robert Roxby.

GIVEAWAY INCLUDED: Blythe is giving away two bundles containing her novels to two winners!

Paper fortune teller for creative people made by my friend Ken Bova, a jewelist and teacher. Folding directions can be found here. —Blythe

*

This is a tool, a paper fortune teller. It might be helpful when you get lost and don’t know which way to turn. I’m an expert on that sort of confusion. Let me explain…

The falcated duck has an iridescent green head, slightly fancier than a common mallard’s. The crescent-shaped wing feathers sweep down like a calligrapher’s grace note. It’s a nice duck. It’s also an odd duck to see in California. The rest of the migrating ducks and Canada geese, even the monarch butterflies hanging from the tree branches in clumps, they all arrived on purpose. Not this duck. The lone falcated duck is what the birders call extralimital; its native range extends from the fringes of Siberia to India, with occasional visits to Vietnam. But it has no natural business being in California. If you ask the duck how it came to be there, it might reply with a gruff “quack” or low whistle or total silence. All of these things can be translated in the same way: “I have no idea.“

I am that duck.

I’m that confused about how I became a writer.

Writers often want to be writers from the time they are children. I gather this from the statements they make about themselves and also from my encounters with young writers. I have met 13-year-olds at library workshops who have already written several books. And I met many aspiring writers when I was a university teacher. It was a shy promise students were making to themselves: they would write books one day. When they shared that goal with me, I said things like, “Well then, it will be handy to know the difference between ‘of’ and ‘have.’ While we’re at it, apostrophes are both interesting and useful; we should talk about apostrophes.” I didn’t teach creative writing—I was there to help them drag their skinny butts through Civil Engineering or Comparative Anatomy.

When I told my students that I had been planning to study nursing until I switched my major to English at the last moment, they laughed. Imagine bloody-minded me providing care and comfort to the suffering sick instead of throwing chalk and spreading gossip about the mutant-hybrid nature of the semicolon. My existence as a teacher, their teacher, seemed as inevitable as the weather. I knew different. I zigged when I might have zagged. That’s all.

I spent more than ten years teaching writing. Then I walked away. I’m not at all sure what came of my time as a teacher. There may be some roads in the Himalayas that are marginally better engineered. There may be fewer beagles with hip dysplasia. I haven’t noticed any general improvement in the use of apostrophes, however. I was good, but not that good.

I didn’t leave teaching to become a writer. If anyone had asked me what my career plans were, I would have said I hoped to become a cowboy or an astronaut. That has been my answer since I was six. It’s a good dodge. Truth is, I’ve never had any career plans. That’s why I was a Dumpster diver. It’s also why I spent time in a cubicle, herding computer manuals through the publication process. Then I stumbled into indexing and became a squirrely recluse who paws through nonfiction for a living. So, I had no intention of becoming a writer just as that falcated duck had no flight plan that led to California.

One day I didn’t have any indexing to do, so I began writing to fill the time chinks. It was crazy fun. Slowly the crumbs of story accumulated into a weird fable full of talking foxes and footnotes. One word led to another and pretty soon there were seventy-thousand-some. I had written a book.

I didn’t know what to do next, but it seemed like I ought to do something. I took the first chapter with me to a retreat hosted by the Society of Children’s Book Writers and Illustrators. Linda Sue Park was encouraging. Alexandra Penfold introduced me to the concept of “edgy” YA, with the helpful clarification that “It’s not bestiality.” A couple of weeks later I started writing another book, The Freak Observer, which was actually publishable.

I do not recommend becoming a writer by accident. I imagine a lot of falcated ducks end up dead instead of in California. They are eaten by sharks while they bob along during a mid-Pacific nap or they just starve, beating their little pointed wings against the wind until their hearts stop. I was a very lucky duck. Editor Andrew Karre fished The Freak Observer out of the slush and bought it and its sister book, Catch and Release. The YALSA librarians noticed TFO and found it worthy of the Morris Award. Sarah Davies liked the look of my third book and became my agent. All of those events are significant turning points. Without them, I’d be a dead duck in the writing world.

If you look carefully at the paper fortune teller, you will see that it provides very solid advice for creative people—advice about mentoring, playing, and being grateful. If you turn in those directions, I think you will be just fine. Consult it as required while you migrate from here to there or now to tomorrow.

—Blythe Woolston

Blythe Woolston’s The Freak Observer won YALSA’s 2011 William C. Morris Award for a debut YA novel. Her second book, Catch and Release, was published in February 2012. She lives in Montana with her family.

Visit Blythe at www.blythewoolston.net.

Follow @blythewoolston on Twitter.

ENTER TO WIN BOTH THE FREAK OBSERVER AND CATCH AND RELEASE!

If you fill out the below entry form, you will be ENTERED TO WIN a bundle containing signed copies of both of Blythe Woolston’s novels: The Freak Observer and Catch and Release, which just came out this month! TWO WINNERS will be chosen. And if you’re a librarian or a teacher with a classroom library, you get extra chances to win!

GIVEAWAY RULES: 

1. You must fill out the entry form to enter. TWO WINNERS will be chosen and both will win both books.
2. If you comment on this post, you get +1 extra entry and an extra chance to win! 
3. If you tweet about this giveaway or share it online, you get +1 extra entry and an extra chance to win!
4. Librarians and teachers with classroom libraries! If you are a librarian or a teacher who would share the prize with your teens, you also get extra chances to win… just note that in the form.
5. This giveaway is international!
6. This giveaway closes at 5pm EST on Thursday, February 23.

ENTER HERE:

Thank you, Blythe, for donating copies of your books for the giveaway!

Want more in this blog series?

The Turning Points series will continue with new guest posts three times a week. Subscribe to distraction no. 99 to keep up with the series, or read all the posts with this tag.

Here are the posts in the series so far:

• Intro to the Turning Points blog series
• Gayle Forman: on overcoming bitterness
• Sean Ferrell: on the Writer who never arrives
• Eileen Cook: on a “nasty” book and a teacher’s advice that inspired her
• Christopher Barzak: on how short stories changed his vision for his novel
• Saundra Mitchell: on deciding to quit and walk away
• Eric Luper: on not writing for trends
• Gretchen McNeil: on how “everything happens for a reason”
• Julia DeVillers on the life-changing fan letter she wrote when she was ten
• Daisy Whitney on the book that opened her eyes to writing YA
• Brandy Colbert on the book that inspired her to find her voice
• Courtney Summers on redefining failure
• Sarah Darer Littman on turning off the noise
• Léna Roy on how she came to call herself a “writer”
• Megan Crewe on not choosing the “right” path
• Jennifer Echols on her eighth anniversary of not being stupid

You can keep up with all the open giveaways on the giveaways page!

Series images by Robert Roxby.

"Sugar"—as we knew her until last night

As so many of you know by now (maybe in part because I’ve been feverishly tweeting about it), the writer of the brilliant, beautiful, wise, and often gut-wrenching anonymous column “Dear Sugar” on the Rumpus was revealed at her coming-out party in San Francisco last night. I wish I’d been there to cheer her on. I’ve been a fan of this incarnation of Sugar since her early columns—I still remember the day I first read “The Baby Bird,” such an astounding piece, and how I crumpled into sobs over it. Though calling myself “a fan” of Sugar’s sounds almost too casual. Parts of me have been utterly transformed by reading her—it goes beyond being her fan. I’ve cried more times than I can count, and yes I’ve worn the “Write Like a Motherf*cker” T-shirt (I wore it during my residency at MacDowell last year… hoping its magic would work; it sure did). And for most of that time, I did know who Sugar really was… I’d guessed the secret like many of us have. And it never changed my relationship to the columns or my love for her writing. In fact, I think that knowing who she was made me love her all the more.

So I’m excited that everyone can now know that Sugar is…

Cheryl Strayed! Author of the incredible novel Torch and the upcoming memoir Wild—which we should all go out right now and pre-order to support and celebrate her. It comes out March 20! PRE-ORDER WILD RIGHT HERE RIGHT NOW!

Photo of Cheryl Strayed by Joni Kabana

How did I guess who Sugar was so long ago? It was her voice. Cheryl Strayed has such a distinct, unflinching, unforgettable voice—and story—and her essays and fiction have stayed with me for years. So it was that after following the “Dear Sugar” column for some months I realized that something was tugging at me… something felt familiar… It reminded me of one of the most amazing things I’ve ever read in my life (was it through a Best American anthology or The Sun magazine, which my mom has a subscription to? I can’t recall). It was this essay, “The Love of My Life,” originally published in 2002. And it also reminded me of a short story I read in Nerve years ago, called “Good.”

I’ve never forgotten those two pieces—THAT’S how incredible of a writer Cheryl Strayed is. To write something so distinct and so memorable that someone who’s read it a long time ago would recognize you years later. (Not to mention her novel Torch, which I loved.) Imagine being a writer like that—a writer so yourself that strangers would know who you are based on your words. That’s what I aspire to become.

So, yes, I had my guess about the true identity of Sugar a long time ago. I then admit I paid very careful attention to the online personas of both Sugar and Cheryl Strayed (both of whom I followed online) to see if they were posting around the same times of day, and if they were ever offline at the same time. When they both went dark / on vacation for the same week, I knew I was right. And I was thrilled. THRILLED. It made me love Sugar and Cheryl all the more.

One of my friends, Christine Lee Zilka, was equally enamored with the Sugar columns (should I admit we were obsessed?) and I confided in her that I thought I’d guessed who it was. I told her my guess. Then she went off and did her own sleuthing and devouring of everything Cheryl Strayed had ever published and agreed. It had to be her. Then my friend and I made a vow that we would not tell anyone else our guess. Not anyone. Even if they begged us. (And I have been begged! Multiple times! I never broke.) I know a lot of us have guessed—probably because they read the same essay and short story I had—and we’ve all kept it quiet for so long.

Today I’m simply excited that all “Dear Sugar” fans can support Cheryl Strayed as she so deserves. She has been so generous with us, so willing to expose her soul to all of us, and help those who needed help, and she never asked anything in return.

I’ve written letters to Sugar, but I never sent them in to her. I was too afraid of what she’d tell me. I knew it could hurt. I knew it would change my life. And I wasn’t ready. All I know is I’ll keep reading anything and everything the woman publishes, under every name.

Here’s a wonderful interview with Cheryl Strayed in The New Yorker online about being Sugar. What she says in answer to the last question is very true. I’m one of those “avid fans”—and I will continue to be. I can’t wait for her new book! And while I’m in California in April, I’m trying to go to one of her readings so I can meet her in person!

I know you need her book now. Let’s all pre-order Wild!

p.s. If you read about my summer writing fantasies, you’ll remember it was one of my fantasies to take a workshop with her. I can’t afford to this summer, but if you can, are you crazy?? If it’s not sold-out by now, sign up!

In 2001, I received a “good rejection” from a major YA publisher for my seventh manuscript. A good rejection is one in which the editor writes you a personal letter rather than sending you a form letter and praises your work before dashing your hopes into tiny, sharp pieces. This particular good rejection said that the YA market was abysmal, but if the market had been better, the publisher would have bought my novel. The manuscript had made it all the way to the editorial board meeting, the last step in saying yes, before they said no.

A good rejection hurts because a real person is turning you down, not an uninhabited address in New York. A near miss hurts because you were almost there, but now, you’re not. Again. And everything hurts a million times worse when you’re pregnant. Normally I would have taken a deep breath, rewritten my query letter, and sent manuscripts out again—or started a new book. Not this time. I didn’t think I could take this heartache anymore on top of starting a new job as a freelance copyeditor, buying and renovating my first house, and most importantly, taking care of the baby.

So I quit writing, cold turkey. Not for good. I never thought I was walking away permanently. But after so many years of trying (I’d finished my first manuscript and sent it to agents and publishers in 1990, when I was twenty years old) and so many near misses (I’d had two agents in the ensuing years who had almost sold my books) and so many words written and mostly unread, I needed a break.

I got one. I copyedited. I bought my house and renovated it. I had my beautiful baby. My husband was laid off in the recession after 9/11. I became the sole breadwinner for our new family. We sold the house, moved to Atlanta where my husband finally found another job, and bought another house. The baby grew. He wouldn’t take a bottle at night unless he was distracted by music, so we started watching a new sort of TV show called a “reality show”—specifically, a brand-new hit called American Idol.

I loved this show. I had been a music major in college before I was an English major, and I had expected this show to be a joke of bad singers publicly exposing themselves, but I was wrong. The singers were great, and I was astonished at their grace under the pressure of competition on national television, especially when many of them were so young. I was especially taken with the story of winner Kelly Clarkson and runner-up Justin Guarini. They were not lovers, but in my mind, they should have been. Their movie together bombed, but huge success for the two of them, with lots of drama along the way, would have made a better story. I couldn’t get this idea out of my head. It dogged me every day on the long drive to my son’s Montessori school.

So I wrote this story down. Before I finished, I had a great idea for another novel. But the stakes were so much higher now. I had a great job and the responsibility of motherhood, and I couldn’t invest time in my own personal dream if success was so unlikely and the consequences were so emotionally devastating. I made myself a promise. I would finish this reality show book and send it off. And after that, I would make a change in my wanna-be writing career.

The definition of stupidity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting a different result. For fourteen years I had written manuscripts by myself, revised them by myself, looked up agents and publishers in a huge reference book in the library, and sent my novels into the abyss. But now there was a wonderful invention called the internet. There still was no Facebook, no Twitter, and I had never heard of a blog. But there were websites with great information, and there were e-mail listserves. I vowed that the day I sent this manuscript off, I would go straight to the computer, join Romance Writers of America, interact with people, and network. I would make friends, even if they were only internet friends. I would figure out how the baffling publishing industry worked and get the business end of my career off the ground.

February 14, 2004.

It turns out that great minds think alike, and publishers had been flooded with reality show novels, most of which were rejected, including mine. But through RWA, I found my two critique partners, Catherine Chant and Victoria Dahl, who have helped me improve every one of my subsequent novels. I learned how to watch the sales reports and target the literary agents who were most likely to represent—and sell—my manuscripts. One year later, in February 2005, I had a new agent with a high-powered literary agency. Six months after that, she sold Major Crush to Simon & Schuster.

Today, Catherine Chant has been a finalist in the Golden Heart, RWA’s most prestigious award for unpublished writers, which means she’s getting very close to selling. Victoria Dahl is a three-time USA Today bestseller and my best friend, even though we live two thousand miles apart. I have sold a total of twelve books to Simon & Schuster, including The One That I Want in stores February 7, my hardcover debut Such a Rush in stores July 10, and my first two adult novels coming in 2013. Finding friends in other writers has made all the difference in my career, and knowing that they have the same aspirations and doubts as me makes me feel at least fifty percent less insane. I am living my dream—making a living as a novelist—because eight years ago, I decided not to do this alone.

—Jennifer Echols

Jennifer Echols was born in Atlanta and grew up in a small town on a beautiful lake in Alabama—a setting that has inspired many of her books. She has written eight romantic novels for young adults, including the comedy Major Crush, which won the National Readers’ Choice Award, and the drama Going Too Far, which was a finalist in the RITA, the National Readers’ Choice Award, and the Book Buyer’s Best, and was nominated by the American Library Association as a Best Book for Young Adults. Her next two teen dramas, including Such a Rush, will appear in 2012 and 2013, with her adult romance novels debuting in 2013, all published by Simon & Schuster. She lives in Birmingham with her husband and her son.

Visit Jennifer at jennifer-echols.com.

Follow @JenniferEchols on Twitter.

Want more in this blog series?

The Turning Points series will continue with new guest posts three times a week. Subscribe to distraction no. 99 to keep up with the series, or read all the posts with this tag.

Here are the posts in the series so far:

• Intro to the Turning Points blog series
• Gayle Forman: on overcoming bitterness
• Sean Ferrell: on the Writer who never arrives
• Eileen Cook: on a “nasty” book and a teacher’s advice that inspired her
• Christopher Barzak: on how short stories changed his vision for his novel
• Saundra Mitchell: on deciding to quit and walk away
• Eric Luper: on not writing for trends
• Gretchen McNeil: on how “everything happens for a reason”
• Julia DeVillers on the fan letter she wrote when she was ten years old that changed her writing career years later
• Daisy Whitney on the book that opened her eyes to writing YA
• Brandy Colbert on the book that inspired her to find her voice
• Courtney Summers on redefining failure
• Sarah Darer Littman on turning off the noise
• Léna Roy on how she came to call herself a “writer” (giveaway open through February 15)
• Megan Crewe on not choosing the “right” path 
  

You can keep up with all the open giveaways on the giveaways page!

Series images by Robert Roxby.

I can’t tell you enough how much I admire the author I’m interviewing today. I first discovered Nina LaCour’s debut novel, the stunning Hold Still, soon after Imaginary Girls was accepted for publication by Dutton Books, and when I visited the office for my first lunch with my editor, her assistant gave me a good-size stack of books to take home with me. Hold Still by Nina LaCour was one of those books. Reading it in those fresh-faced weeks when my book deal was still new made me all the more sure that I’d chosen the right imprint and the right editor. Because oh, did I love and admire Nina LaCour’s writing.

In a wonderful reminder of the world’s connectedness, I discovered afterward that not only did we share an editor in Julie Strauss-Gabel, we shared a friend, the writer Christine Lee Zilka, which made me happier still. I was even able to meet Nina in person this past summer at the SCBWI conference in Los Angeles (she was meeting Julie at the hotel one night, and Julie knew how much I loved her writing, so I got to say hi). I made an effort not to fangirl all over Nina and embarrass myself, not helped by the fact that the theme for the gala that night was “Pajama Party.” Yes, I met an author I admire, in the company of my editor who I admire, while wearing pajamas. Sometimes life can be very surreal. Even so, I don’t think Nina held it against me.

Nina LaCour, photographed by Kristyn Stroble

Now, to celebrate the release week of Nina LaCour’s new novel, The Disenchantments, I’m thrilled to share this writer-to-writer interview—as well as my love and excitement for The Disenchantments. I am so passionate about this book, I blurbed it!

And YOU have a chance to win a copy of The Disenchantments—and this giveaway is INTERNATIONAL! Just fill out the entry form at the bottom of this post. And if you comment, tweet, or tell me you’re a librarian or a teacher, you get extra chances to win!

Before we dive in to the interview, I’ll leave it to the jacket copy and the book trailer to give you a peek into the story:

Colby and Bev have a long-standing pact: graduate, hit the road with Bev’s band, and then spend the year wandering around Europe. But moments after the tour kicks off, Bev makes a shocking announcement: she’s abandoning their plans—and Colby—to go her own way in the fall.

But the show must go on and The Disenchantments weave through the Pacific Northwest, playing in small towns and dingy venues, while roadie-Colby struggles to deal with Bev’s already-growing distance and the most important question of all: what’s next?

Morris Award–finalist Nina LaCour draws together the beauty and influences of music and art to brilliantly capture a group of friends on the brink of the rest of their lives.

Now… for my questions:

Nova Ren Suma (me!): I feel like I should start at the start—though maybe there’s a whole other start I don’t know about—when you came to be writing YA and publishing your first (brilliant, beautiful) award-winning novel Hold Still. I know you entered your MFA program thinking you were writing fiction for adults (which sounds oh-so-familiar, as that’s how it was for me), but your workshops there led you to realize the book you were writing was YA. So how did this come about? And once your debut was published for a YA audience, what led you to keep writing for teens?

Nina LaCour: First, Nova, let me just say how incredibly excited I am to be interviewed on your blog. I love your author interviews so much, and have secretly wanted to be featured here for a long time. So thank you!

Now, to answer your question about the start. I applied to Mills College with pages from a novel I was writing that was, and still is, definitely for an adult audience. Not because it’s too raunchy or anything—as we all know, YA can deal with mature content—but because the central characters are adults. I spent most of my first year of grad school working on that novel and on short stories, and then I decided to take a YA craft class, followed by a YA workshop, both taught by Kathryn Reiss, who is a celebrated author and an expert of YA and middle grade literature. I was so inspired by the novels we read in the class: Fat Kid Rules the World by K. L. Going and Looking for Alaska by John Green especially. I also stumbled on a novel called Brave New Girl by Louis Luna that I absolutely loved. These books were so different from the children’s literature I’d read growing up, and I found myself interested in writing about high school for the first time. I was in my early twenties, which felt like the perfect vantage point at the time: close enough to high school to remember almost everything, but far enough to have the distance I needed to really examine it. So I wrote a few scenes about a girl who recently lost her best friend to submit for workshop, and then I just kept writing. I found the experience of working on that novel joyful and natural in a way that writing my adult novel was not, so I set the adult novel aside and just kept writing. The first half of Hold Still was my graduate thesis. A year later Julie Strauss-Gabel at Penguin acquired it. I’ll always be grateful that I took those classes and read those novels.

Writing YA is still exciting; it still feels exactly right. But I also have every intention of returning to that first novel I entered grad school with. It’s continued to evolve in my imagination and I know that I’ll be able to write it much better now than I could have eight years ago. I hope that I’ll be able to write for both teens and adults for a very long time, because I still have a lot of stories about being a teenager to write, and I also have older stories itching to get out.

NRS: Let me just pause and flat-out tell you that I am absolutely, deeply in love with The Disenchantments, your new book coming out from Dutton February 16. There is something magical about this novel—how Colby, your narrator, sees his friends Bev, Meg, and Alexa, the three fascinating, exciting, and yes, beautiful girls who make up the Disenchantments, the worst all-girl band in history. And oh, especially the way he sees his best friend, Bev. Colby’s feelings for Bev fill up this novel in every line of dialogue, every paragraph and description, without ever being too in-your-face. I loved never being able to get inside her head and only seeing her as Colby does: a true mystery. I was struck by this choice in POV and so thrilled you told the story this way. Did you always plan to keep it to Colby’s perspective? And as a female author, was this your first time writing from the male POV? Was there anything different to you about writing in a male voice, or Colby’s voice in particular?

NL: Thank you so much, Nova! Have I mentioned how thrilling this little box on the back cover is to me?

I didn’t worry too much about writing in a male voice. No matter what, people will say that it isn’t masculine enough, and that’s okay with me. It’s Colby’s voice, but it’s also very much my own, and I didn’t try to fight that. Though I know there are major differences between teen boys’ and teen girls’ experiences, most of what we go through are human experiences. We all know what longing feels like, what anger feels like. We’ve all dealt with deception and secrets and forgiveness and hope and friendship and love. So I tried to get into his head and heart the best I could, and trusted that that would be enough.

A couple male friends read an early draft and their reactions to it confirmed what I knew going in—that there isn’t a single teen boy experience. The first friend wrote to tell me about empathizing with Colby because he had once felt about a girl exactly the way Colby feels about Bev. The second friend told me that I was not objectifying the girls enough, that no matter how wonderful and sensitive Colby was, he would be noticing things about their bodies. I took some of this advice, which wasn’t difficult, but I let Colby remain a romantic. I kept him respectful.

NRS: My novels often start from the tiniest bloom—a scene maybe, a character in a situation, but beyond that it’s all fuzzy and I have no worldly idea what will happen. I guess, in a way, I write to find out. So I can’t help but be curious about other writers and their ideas. Tell me, how do your novels first come to you? Is it a character, a concept, a line of dialogue, a song, a place? How did The Disenchantments begin for you—where did the idea emerge from? And did the story come to you fully formed, or did you discover it more as you wrote?

NL: Stories usually begin with a voice for me. Some character, somewhere in my head, will say something, and I’ll think, Well, that’s interesting. Usually a mood goes along with it, too. And then I go from there. I need to know certain things about a story before I get too deeply involved in writing it. At first, I’ll write a lot of scene fragments, just whatever comes to me, usually focused on characters or tone. Soon, though, the story begins to take shape. I know the skeleton of it, but I have to fill in the rest.

The first tiny hint of The Disenchantments came to me in a writing exercise in 2006. I had just graduated from my MFA program, was revising Hold Still, and was terrified about being finished with school. I hadn’t not been in school since I was five years old. So I took an informal workshop with a Mills professor on writing beautiful sentences. I had never taken a class so focused on language, and found the exercises freeing because they weren’t about story or character; they were about structure. So, one day while modeling a very long sentence, I wrote something about a girl named Bev, the lead singer of The Disenchantments and the best friend of the narrator, and how she suddenly changes after a science fair. Those of you who have read the book understand how much of the story this single sentence gave me. I set it aside for a while, but the story kept growing.

Photo courtesy of thedisenchantments.com

NRS: You may not remember this, but I started reading The Disenchantments on a train ride back from the Hudson Valley and while I read I was tweeting wildly about how much I loved it. I wish I could go back in time on Twitter to screen-cap my thrill over your words, but you should know, I dog-eared quite a few pages in the ARC I read… which is something I do when I love a book and savor its sentences and plan to reread it later to savor some more. You have a way of describing emotion that thrills me. What question am I trying to ask you here besides telling you how much I love your writing? Oh, yes. What advice do you have for writers about crafting a story and taking their writing to the next level?

NL: Those tweets made me so happy. Before the release of both of my books, there was this time where I held my breath. We finish copyedits and the ARCs go out and then there’s no turning back. The hush before feedback comes is brutal, so when it does, and when it’s good, it’s the greatest relief.

I am so flattered that you dog-eared pages—I do that with writing I love, too—and I’m glad that what spoke to you was the emotion, because really, that’s what art for me is all about. It’s great if art makes me think—I thrive on that. But when I look at a painting or read a book or listen to a song or watch a movie, what I’m hoping is that it will make me feel something.

For a long time I hoped to change my writing style because I wanted to write rich, lyrical sentences (like yours!). That’s why I signed up for that beautiful sentences class. I thought a lightbulb would go off and I would suddenly be writing the way I thought I should. Like I would suddenly write brilliant similes and have all of this creative imagery. But that didn’t happen, so eventually I had to accept that I write simple, straight-forward sentences and that that’s okay. Sometimes I still worry about it. I worry about my dependance on “to be.” I worry about my copious use of dialogue. About adverbs. About everything. But then I remind myself that for every writer I love who writes in a luxurious, descriptive style, there is also one I love who writes simply. That would be my advice: Pay attention to the way you write and honor it. Don’t try to write like someone you’re not.

NRS: This advice really resonates with me, as I’m struggling with a similar feeling off-screen right this very moment. Thank you for that. Back to the questions…

How does your work as a high school English teacher find its way into your writing? Do your students influence you at all—and does the act of teaching about writing or literature change how you view your own work?

NL: The best thing about teaching high school for me is that it’s so removed from my writing. When I go to work, I get to stop thinking about looming deadlines and plot gaps and Goodreads. I can just sit in a classroom with bright, funny, motivated students and talk about books that are not mine. And yes, my students influence me, but only as much as everything else in my life influences me. I enjoy teaching because it takes me out of my own head, gives me a community of people to focus on so that I’m not so focused on myself.

NRS: Place is so much a part of this novel. Colby, Bev, Meg, and Alexa head off on a road trip from San Francisco up to the Pacific Northwest on the last tour of the Disenchantments, stopping for shows along the way. Every single place is so incredibly vivid: from a basement to a field in the middle of nowhere to a grungy hotel room to “Melinda,” the borrowed VW bus out on the open road. Were any of the places in this novel places you’ve actually been? How many were invented for the story—or how much did the real world, and real settings, shape the fictional road trip that Colby and his friends take?

NL: So many of the places were snatched from real life. In Fort Bragg, I stayed in a motel just like the one I describe, with a laminated list of rules just like the list that offends Meg. That lemonade stand? I passed it on my way north. I drove for another half mile or so and then turned around to go back, and as soon as I got a better look at the wild children and their crappy lemonade and their bikes strewn across the vacant lot, I knew everything would go straight into the book. A few months later, on another trip, my wife and I visited our friends who were farming on Vashon Island. I didn’t have any idea that farming or farmers would be part of the story, but suddenly, it fit. Those are just a few examples. A lot of the places are imagined, though. Going back to Fort Bragg, The Basement, which is where The Disenchantments play their first show, appeared to me out of nowhere in a burst of inspiration. It isn’t real but when I was in that town I felt like there must have been more going on. I wondered where people hung out at night, and then I invented an answer.

NRS: There’s something I’ve struggled with after writing my first YA novel Imaginary Girls, and I keep hearing it’s pretty common: Second novel syndrome. Maybe there’s the pressure of meeting expectations, or not having met expectations; maybe it’s fear or nerves, or some unspeakable creature that haunts novelists after their first book comes out, just for fun. So I wonder, did it get to you, too? Because your second novel shows not a hint of it. It’s so full of life, so gorgeously sculpted, and distinct from your first book in the best of ways, while also staying true to your voice. Did you have any struggles to get it there? And what advice do you have for authors working on their second novels?

NL: I had a terrible case of SNS. I spent a year fretting and barely writing anything. I had the idea for the book, a few scenes, and a crushing desire to write a second book that was better than my first. It’s important to me to be always growing, so while I was so grateful that Hold Still was well received, I was afraid that I was going to disappoint people. I went from a book about a suicide and its aftermath to a book about a road trip. I mean, that’s oversimplifying things, but it’s how I felt. I knew there was a lot of substance lurking beneath the surface of The Disenchantments and that, if I did it right, I could make longing and uncertainty resonate the way Hold Still’s grief and healing did for many readers. I just didn’t know how to get there. One thing Julie said to me on the phone after she read the first draft was that it was a much more complicated novel than Hold Still, which I hadn’t thought of before and which made me feel a lot better.

My first draft was something like 46,000 words. It was a skinny little thing, but it was all I could do at the time. It was in the second draft that it came to life. I added so many pages and a major plot point. First drafts are always a little bit painful for me; I love the revising, the fleshing out, the reconsidering. What made my second draft successful was that I got out of the house, which is something I blogged about here. And then I let myself play a little. I felt very little joy in writing my first draft, but I had some of those amazing highs that come with believing in your work during the second.

I’m the kind of person who, when expecting an email, will stare at my screen until it arrives, barely able to eat or hold a conversation until it does. So my most practical piece of advice to debut writers is this: Start your second book as soon as you can. Don’t stop writing while you wait for the first one to come out. Learn to use all of the empty months, or else you’ll spend too much energy waiting for tiny slivers of information and not enough on the one thing you still have complete control over: your new work.

NRS: I am absolutely not going to give away the end of the book. No spoilers! But I want to say that I found your choices at the end of The Disenchantments—how you left the story, and where you left each of your characters—to be exactly what I wanted for them, and yet also surprise me as a reader. I didn’t predict, yet I now couldn’t imagine this book, and this road trip, ending any other way. When you came up with the idea for this story, did you know how it would end? Was there anything about this novel—or your characters—that surprised you?

NL: I know that it’s a trend, especially in film, I think, to just let a story drop off at the end. Martha Marcy May Marlene is a great example. I understand that choice, but it’s not a choice I’ll ever make. One thing that novels and films can give us, that life can’t always give us, are satisfying endings. I’m drawn to literature and film for the narrative, for the full story, complete with a resolution. I don’t care if it’s happy or sad as long as there’s something. In my first drafts of Hold Still I tried a little too hard. Julie said something along the lines of, “I feel like this story ends for fifty pages,” which was both funny and entirely true. I had to cut a lot.

What you said earlier about writing to find out? That rings true for me. Sometimes the only way to find out is through the work itself. I had no idea what Colby was going to decide to do at the end of the road trip, for example. I had a possible solution, but it didn’t feel exactly right. And then, as the story evolved, it became clear to me. I actually don’t know if I could have captured Colby’s uncertainty about the future if I had been certain of it while writing. In some ways, his panic reflected my panic—I had no idea where I was going in the story!—but I knew where the band had to go next, so I kept moving them up the coast, trusting that I would figure it out eventually.

Photo courtesy of thedisenchantments.com

NRS: And finally, if there were one song you could leave us with, to get readers in the mood for reading your exciting, sexy, gorgeous, and deeply authentic new novel when it comes out this week on Thursday, February 16, tell us… what would it be?

Camera Obscura easily takes a place in my top five favorite bands, and when I went on my first research road trip for The Disenchantments, I spent many hours listening to My Maudlin Career on a loop. The lyrics to this song, “Forests and Sands” suit my novel in so many ways. I mean, the first line is “I’m in a van and I’m holding your hand.” I love its wistful, bittersweet tone, and this version was filmed in San Francisco, where the book begins.

Happy Release Week, Nina, and thank you for letting me interview you! I have to say, I’m feeling very inspired by the wise writing advice you’ve shared here with everyone. Thank you so much!

The Disenchantments by Nina LaCour comes out this week, on Thursday, February 16! Find out more about the book at thedisenchantments.com and visit Nina’s website at ninalacour.com. You can also follow Nina on Twitter.

EDITED FEB. 22. WINNER OF THE GIVEAWAY ANNOUNCED…

Thank you to everyone who entered the giveaway attached to this interview! One lucky person has won a copy of The Disenchantments by Nina LaCour… and that lucky person is…

Joana R.

Congrats, Joana! I will email you soon for your mailing address. Thanks again to everyone who entered!

And now I’ll leave you with one last peek into The Disenchantments, with this music video from the “worst band in history”:

Photos of Nina LaCour by Kristyn Stroble. 

The biggest turning point in my life was something that on the surface might not seem to have anything to do with writing at all, but would have completely changed the course of my writing career if I’d decided differently.

For you to understand why the decision was so difficult, you’ll need to know a little about me.

All my life, I’ve adored stories. As a preschooler, I’d dictate stories to my mom for her to write down in stapled “books” I’d then illustrate. By the time I was in my teens, I was writing one or two novels (which while great practice will thankfully never see the light of day) every year, amid academics and various extracurricular activities.

I applied the same self-discipline to school. I did my homework without being reminded, spent library time researching projects while other kids were goofing off. I knew I could do well if I tried, and I’d have felt ashamed to turn in work that wasn’t up to my own standards.

My parents encouraged both sides of my personality: the creative and the studious. They made sure I kept in mind that most authors held down a second job to make ends meet. I grew up accepting that I’d better get the best education I could, so I’d have the most possible options while I kept writing on the side.

In the same way, I accepted that I was obviously going to go to university. I was near the top of my class, and got into a BA program on full scholarship. When I picked psychology as my major, I knew I’d also be doing grad school. There were very few jobs in the field for anyone with less than a master’s degree. It was the only option that made sense.

Now, I’d loved school as a kid. By high school, my enthusiasm was waning: too much busy work, and too many other things I wanted to be doing. University turned out to be better, because I had so much more choice when it came to classes—and because I realized I could skip many of the parts I disliked without it hurting my marks. If a professor who bored me always taught straight from the textbook, I started leaving during the breaks in the middle of lectures. If I found a tutorial leader unengaging and there weren’t participation marks, I rarely went to that class’s tutorials. I still enjoyed hearing lectures from enthusiastic professors who clearly knew their subjects. I still took pride in handing in essays I’d thought long and hard about. But my tolerance for all the less-enjoyable parts of the educational experience was dropping rapidly.

I should have recognized this as a warning sign, but since I was still getting good marks, it didn’t occur to me that anything was wrong. I was just adapting to my situation, that was all. In my fourth year, I became depressed to the point that I started taking medication, but I attributed it to other causes. Even when I had to attend monthly meetings with a psychology professor’s grad students and left each one so frustrated with how little actually got done I was ready to scream, I accepted them as a necessary evil.

During my last year, I applied for the grad program I was most interested in, and was turned down.

Since I was confident in my marks and references, I figured the issue was that the program was geared toward working with teenagers, when almost all of my experience was with younger children. (I’d wanted to switch focus, and hoped I could get away with it.) Obviously I just had to build some more experience, and then apply again next year, to programs more suited to my work history. No problem.

I’d been too busy or too exhausted to write much when I was juggling university and a part-time job. Now, suddenly, I had time. I was working, but it was still part-time, and it didn’t leave me with readings and assignments I had to complete after I left. Before long, I finished the first book I had enough confidence in to query agents with, and got several requests, though no offer. I started writing and sending out short stories regularly, and within a few months made my first major sale. It was an amazing feeling, to know that people who didn’t know me actually wanted to read—and pay for!—my writing.

But as the deadline for reapplying to grad school approached, I couldn’t help noticing my happiness fading. I felt increasingly apathetic about everything, including my writing, like when I’d first become depressed. Whenever I focused on anything related to the applications, I felt sick to my stomach. I told myself that was normal, that I’d get used to being in school again, that I needed this in order to get the right kind of job. That it was something I just had to do.

I let things go on like that for several weeks before I finally asked myself, Is it really?

Just allowing myself to consider that question gave me the most incredible sense of release. That, more than anything else, told me I’d been going about this all wrong. I’d been assuming I’d go to grad school for so long that I’d seen anything else as failure. The fact that I knew my family expected me to continue my education was an additional pressure. But when I let myself be honest about it, I knew the last thing I wanted was to give up at least two more years of my life on something that would clearly make me miserable.

Did it mean my job situation was going to be more shaky? Well, yes, but I knew I could make enough money to get by. I could always reconsider in the future, if my writing hadn’t started providing more income. What was really important to me was giving that writing a chance. Giving myself a chance to keep living a life that was making me happy.

Once I’d come to terms with my change in thinking, the hardest part was telling my parents. My dad got angry with me for the first time in at least a decade, and ranted about how I was ruining my future before stomping off because he couldn’t even handle talking to me anymore. (To my surprise, my mom, who’d always seemed more concerned about issues like education and money, took the news a lot more calmly.) But the decision felt so right I didn’t waver. By the next time I went to see them, he’d started to come around.

About six months later, I started working on a new novel. That book, which came to be titled Give Up the Ghost, got me my first agent a year later, and my first publishing deal a year after that.

I can’t say what would have happened instead if I’d gone back to school like I originally intended. All I know for sure is that Ghost would not have been written then, which means it quite possibly would not have been written at all. I might have sacrificed my dream for a little extra security that I didn’t even need.

It’s a decision I’ve never once regretted.

—Megan Crewe

Like many authors, Megan Crewe finds writing about herself much more difficult than making things up. A few definite facts: she lives in Toronto, Canada, with her husband and three cats, she works as a behavioral therapist for children and teens with special needs, and she’s spent the last five years studying kung fu, so you should probably be nice to her. Her debut novel, the YA paranormal Give Up the Ghost, was released in 2009. Her YA post-apocalyptic novel The Way We Fall (the first in a trilogy) has just come out.

Visit her at www.megancrewe.com.

Follow @megancrewe on Twitter.

Want more in this blog series?

The Turning Points series will continue with new guest posts three times a week. Subscribe to distraction no. 99 to keep up with the series, or read all the posts with this tag.

Here are the posts in the series so far:

• Intro to the Turning Points blog series
• Gayle Forman: on overcoming bitterness
• Sean Ferrell: on the Writer who never arrives
• Eileen Cook: on a “nasty” book and a teacher’s advice that inspired her
• Christopher Barzak: on how short stories changed his vision for his novel
• Saundra Mitchell: on deciding to quit and walk away
• Eric Luper: on not writing for trends
• Gretchen McNeil: on how “everything happens for a reason”
• Julia DeVillers on the fan letter she wrote when she was ten years old that changed her writing career years later
• Daisy Whitney on the book that opened her eyes to writing YA
• Brandy Colbert on the book that inspired her to find her voice
• Courtney Summers on redefining failure (TWO giveaways open through February 10)
• Sarah Darer Littman on turning off the noise (giveaway open through February 13!)
• Léna Roy on how she came to call herself a “writer” (giveaway open through February 15)

You can keep up with all the open giveaways on the giveaways page!

Series images by Robert Roxby.

Please know:

1. I am not ghostwriting again. (The YA novel I mention in that old post was a work-for-hire project.)
2. I am not that massively stressed out that I feel like I’m drowning.
3. I am not publishing a new short story, even though I wish I were.
4. And, oh, we no longer have that loft bed.

That was an old post from 2006. (Fine, I’ll link it here so you know what I’m talking about. It mentions Big Bird.)

But a weird thing occurred while I was rereading this post from my archives. I remembered how things used to be. For a moment, I’d time-traveled back to 2006, waking up psycho-early for my day job because I had to slip my writing time into a couple hours before my stressful copyediting job began, since afterward I came home to my brain bleeding and could only collapse in front of the TV. This was during the time I’d pushed my own writing aside, what I thought of as my “real” writing, and was doing work-for-hire novels for money, a time I was not very happy, when I thought I’d never make it here, where I am today.

I think things are hard sometimes? Ha! Talk about perspective.

(Also, I wouldn’t be anywhere near here without E. Obviously.)

And, so you know how the aftermath of that post turned out, I did drop everything to do the revisions to the story, and it was published. However it now occurs to me: It turns out that the work-for-hire novel and other ghostwriting projects were more important than the adult litfic short stories I was trying to publish. I mean, who gave me first real shot… the YA/kidlit community or the old guard of adult fiction? So, in a way, I was wrong way back in 2006. I was doing something really important and I had no idea.

Anyway, all is well. I apologize for any confusion.

(This post used to have a link to the old short story in question, but yes, I deleted it.)

I didn’t call myself a “writer” in 2004 when at the tender age of 35, I finally allowed myself to start working on a novel that had been marinating in my head for years. It is the story that developed into Edges.

I didn’t call myself a “writer” until after September 2007, when I really had to make a choice about who I was and what I was made of—when I embraced writing as a vocation.

Yes, I am a veritable late bloomer. What took me so darn long? In my early 20s I wasn’t a stranger to putting myself out there, singing and performing in nightclubs. But my Gran, Madeleine L’Engle—yes, the creator of one of the most beloved books, A Wrinkle in Time—was the writer. Me? As a kid, tween, teen, I always wrote. Then as an adult, I was the actress who wrote, the bartender who wrote, the therapist who wrote, the mom who wrote.

Just never the writer. I would listen to my Gran talk about craft and she would say: “You’re a writer if you write.” Somehow I thought that this dictum applied to everybody else except me. I wrote in secret.

My early 20s were arty and wild. I lived with my grandmother off and on, I did performance art, I wrote, and of course, I would talk about my dreams as if they were already a reality.

When I made up my mind to leave the arts to go to school to be a therapist at the age of 25, I felt I needed to be serious and useful—I had used up my quota of “castles in the air.”

I could never make a living at performing, or writing like Madeleine L’Engle—to attempt to do so past a certain age would be hubris. We all know writing takes discipline, talent, and luck: I wasn’t very disciplined, I was unsure about my own talents, and luck—well, that’s not something we can count on, can we?

I worked in a psychiatric hospital in the Bronx. I moved to Moab, Utah (where I met my husband), and started an out-patient program for teens who had substance abuse problems, I worked as a counselor in a Dual Diagnosis treatment facility in San Francisco. But by far my favorite job was as a high school counselor downtown in NYC: teenagers were my people.

Then in the beginning of 2000, I started having babies and my grandmother needed caring for. My life revolved around the babies and the grandmother. Watching her decline was very painful; she wasn’t herself anymore. It was as if all of her ailments had trapped her spirit.

It’s strange that the death of one of my best beloveds was my turning point.

Early September 2007, I was standing outside of her house in Northwestern Connecticut with my husband, looking at the stars in her honor. Who are you?

My husband asked me the hard-hitting questions: Do you want to be a writer? Are you a writer?

Yes I do, and yes I am.

I had been trying to write that novel for the past four years. I wrote the first draft in three months: a teen runs away from an alcoholic father in New York City and finds himself at a youth hostel in Moab, Utah.

I rewrote it and then sent it out to one agent who rejected it. It went back in the drawer.

It came out again.

More rejection. More time in the drawer.

What then, was my vocation? Should I get another Master’s degree? Become a nurse?

But looking up at the stars on that warm September night, I felt my grandmother speak to me for the first time in years. Yes, it’s hokey, but I’ll say it: it was as if her energy had been released into the atmosphere and she was telling me to accept my calling, that it was time to find my own voice.

That night both my husband and my grandmother were telling me to embrace my true self, to stop fooling around, to take my writing seriously. Stop dabbling! So what if most writers don’t make a living at it. It would be a leap of faith. I would have to live, breathe, eat the writing world. I would have to commit to it 150%. I would have to follow in the road map Madeleine L’Engle had already created for me: create community, be around other writers, open myself up . . . teach.

I did another rewrite and I was finally able to secure an agent, the wonderful Edward Necarsulmer, who opened my eyes to the world of young adult literature, for that is where I found my voice. He recommended that I read Ellen Hopkins, Chris Crutcher, and Laurie Halse Anderson. John Green. It was a joy and a revelation to discover a whole world of wonderful authors and story-telling that wasn’t preachy yet refused to be cynical.

I started teaching and leading writing workshops. First at The Cathedral of St. John the Divine and NYC bookstores, then with Writopia Lab in NYC and Westchester, with kids, tweens, and teens who inspire me every day.

Edges was finally published in December 2010.

Now I write no matter what. No matter the reviews, positive or negative, no matter if my work is rejected. I keep reminding myself that my job is to serve the story and to tell the story in the best possible way that I can.

And I learned that I need to own what I write. People will ask me what my book is about, and even after one year, I still have a hard time narrowing it down to a sexy sound byte. Because truthfully, it’s about spirituality and addiction, and that’s not very sexy, is it? There are no vampires (unless you see addiction as a metaphor), and there’s no bodice ripping, but there is grittiness mashed with sweetness and hope.

People say that an author’s first novel is the most autobiographical, and that is also true in my case. Ava, one of the protagonists, is certainly a version of my younger self. And like all of the characters, I have certainly struggled with the nature of truth and reality, and what to believe.

This week we celebrate the 50th anniversary of my grandmother’s Newbery Award–winning opus, A Wrinkle in Time, which is perhaps my favorite book of all time. Help me honor my grandmother with your promise of being true to yourself as well—if you are a writer, find your voice, because the world needs you. I may not be Madeleine L’Engle, but I am Léna Roy, and I have learned from her that art comes from serving the story: nothing more, and nothing less.

—Léna Roy

Léna Roy was raised in New York City, in the cloistered environs of a theological seminary, with extracurricular education provided by Manhattan’s club scene. She’s worked as a bartender, an actor, and with at-risk adolescents in Utah, California, and NYC. She now lives with her husband, two sons, daughter, cat, and four African water frogs in Katonah, New York, and is the Program Manager for Writopia Lab in Westchester. Edges is her first novel.

You can find her on her blog, www.lenaroy.com.

Follow @lenaroy on Twitter.

EDITED FEB. 19… GIVEAWAY WINNER ANNOUNCED!

Thank you to everyone who entered the giveaway via the entry form—and thank you to the author for donating the prize! I’m happy to announce the winner:

Kristen Aigeldinger won a signed copy of Edges!

Congrats! I’ll email the winner for her mailing addresses. Thank you again to everyone who entered!

Want more in this blog series?

The Turning Points series will continue with new guest posts three times a week. Subscribe to distraction no. 99 to keep up with the series, or read all the posts with this tag.

Here are the posts in the series so far:

• Intro to the Turning Points blog series
• Gayle Forman: on overcoming bitterness
• Sean Ferrell: on the Writer who never arrives
• Eileen Cook: on a “nasty” book and a teacher’s advice that inspired her
• Christopher Barzak: on how short stories changed his vision for his novel
• Saundra Mitchell: on deciding to quit and walk away
• Eric Luper: on not writing for trends
• Gretchen McNeil: on how “everything happens for a reason”
• Julia DeVillers on the fan letter she wrote when she was ten years old that changed her writing career years later
• Daisy Whitney on the book that opened her eyes to writing YA
• Brandy Colbert on the book that inspired her to find her voice (giveaway open through February 8!)
• Courtney Summers on redefining failure (TWO giveaways open through February 10)
• Sarah Darer Littman on turning off the noise (giveaway open through February 13!)

You can keep up with all the open giveaways on the giveaways page!

Series images by Robert Roxby.

(This photo of me was *not* taken at a writing workshop.)

If money (and references) were no object, if I could be in a few places at once and spend the whole summer traveling around the country (and the idea of that many flights didn’t make me sick), here is where I’d go and what I’d do:

June:

I’d start off the summer by going to the Wesleyan Writers Conference, on the campus of Wesleyan University, which E and I visited once, in college, to stay with our friend M, who was a member of something I think called Eclectic House? Anyway, we had a spectacular visit, mostly because we adore M, but I also remember how I loved the beautiful campus. At the Wesleyan conference, I’d kill to be in Amy Bloom’s workshop. (Please tell me you’ve read Away. If you haven’t, you must read Away! Keep tissues close by and maybe don’t read the end out in public. This novel burst open my heart.)

Or, I’d spend the entire month in Montreal, at the Summer Literary Seminars. All I have to do to explain why is give you two words: Mary. Gaitskill. (If you know me, you know my wild passion for the short stories of Mary Gaitskill.)

Or I’d work on something fantastical—and really push at the boundaries of “genre” and see where I’d go and what I’d write—by heading to the Clarion East Workshop in San Diego to absorb genius and learn world-building from none other than Holly Black and Cassandra Clare. Uh, what? Yeah. Dream workshop.

July:

Since Tin House is one of my most favorite literary journals (isn’t it everyone’s?) I would have to start off July by returning to the Tin House Writers’ Workshop in Portland, Oregon—this one is so fantastic, just so fantastic there are no words—and I think this time I’d try to be in Dorothy Allison’s workshop for the simple fact that reading her when I was a young writer had so much to do with going after this dream. Her writing changed my life. Also, any excuse to get back to Portland, I’ll take it.

I happen to be convinced that Cheryl Strayed is utterly amazing, and so even though I don’t even write creative nonfiction, I’d want to take her workshop at the Port Townsend Writers’ Conference (I mean, wouldn’t this be a reason to start writing creative nonfiction?). I think her class could be transformative.

I might need a car for this one—and if I drank I’d probably appreciate this one more since it’s in wine country—but I would have to go to the Napa Valley Writers’ Conference to take a writing class with Tayari Jones, one of my favorite authors. I’ve heard such wonderful things about the intensity of these workshops, and that it’s less about the schmoozing and networking of other conferences, and more simply about craft and writing. I like.

Sure, if I could be in two (three? four?) places at once, I’d also hit the Sewanee Writers’ Conference in Tennessee. I’ve been to this conference, once, when I was a grad student, and it was absolutely wonderful. I’ve always wanted to go back again—as a scholar or a fellow—but the two needed references (and the fact that my book is YA) has kept me from applying again. This conference is a dream, truly. The first time I went, I was in Margot Livesey’s workshop—and she was one of the best writing teachers I’ve ever worked with in my life, and I’m including all the professors I worked with in the Columbia MFA program. This time, if I went to Sewanee, I’d want to be in Alice McDermott’s workshop. (Have you read After This? Charming Billy? Child of My Heart? Aaaaah, read read!)

Now Provincetown. Provincetown in summer is supposed to be such perfection. Even more perfect would be spending a week there for a children’s writing workshop with Jacqueline Woodson at the Fine Arts Work Center Summer Program. Her class is focused on realistic fiction, and I’m already imagining what I’d bring if I could go… a YA novel? A middle-grade novel? It would be a dream to work with Jacqueline Woodson… I devoured all of her novels recently in one fell swoop when I was away at a colony, and her writing is so beautiful and brilliant it makes me want to cry. (Also: actually literally cry. Some are sad.)

August:

I keep peeking at this conference. I don’t know too much about it except that it’s at VCFA (and my VCFA MFA envy has reached the rafters by now). It’s called the Postgraduate Writers’ Conference, so it’s for people who already have MFAs, and even better… there’s a young adult workshop (which, I must say, is sorely lacking at these other conferences). I could take a workshop with Cynthia Leitich Smith or Tim Wynne-Jones! And I could pretend I was a VCFA MFA student for a week…

Of course we know where else I’d go in August. I’ve always wanted to go to Bread Loaf, and I got waitlisted once when I was a grad student for that coveted waitership, but never did get a shot to go. Such sadness when they didn’t call. I’ve heard that this is the summer conference, so every summer I look longingly northward toward Vermont, imagining. Besides… oh, to be in Lan Samantha Chang’s workshop… Her novella Hunger slayed me.

And obviously, obviously, I’d return again this summer to the SCBWI Summer Conference in Los Angeles. Not because it’s a workshop—it’s not—but because I had such an amazing time last year and met so many amazing people. I can’t afford to go again this year, but I can dream!

So there we have it. My whirlwind fantasy summer. I think you can never focus enough on craft, so there is always room for a new writing workshop in my life.

Though… I mean, really… let’s be serious here. If I could afford to do any one thing in the world? I know what it would be, and it wouldn’t be a workshop: I’d rent an apartment in Paris for a couple weeks—ideally a month!—and go there to write. That’s it. In fact, this is an actual goal of mine and E’s, and I want to make it happen in the next few years. So. Instead of shelling out money for a workshop, I’ll keep it close and whisper to myself whenever I get envious of other writers’ summer extravaganzas: Paris… Paris… Paris… Paris… Paris… One day, you will have Paris. (Or Buenos Aires… considering there, too.)

Now it’s your turn. Writers, if you could go anywhere and do anything this summer, where would it be and what would you do? What summer workshops catch your eye… Did I miss any? Or would your fantasy join my fantasy in Paris and write at a sidewalk café together?

Comment to let me know.

Sometimes, you just have to take a few steps backwards and turn off the noise.

That’s a hard lesson to absorb when you’re an “overachiever” type personality. The kind of girl who tries to “Climb Every Mountain,” then immediately thinks about scaling the next peak before taking the time to enjoy the view.

But all the most important lessons I’ve learned in life haven’t come easily, so why should the ones in my writing life be any different?

Maybe this lesson was so hard because my first book came too easily. When, at age 38, I finally gave myself the permission to pursue writing, the passion I was discouraged from following because it wouldn’t lead to a lucrative career, I made a promise to myself that I would get a book contract for my 40th birthday present to myself. I achieved that goal two months after my birthday. Close enough. My first book, Confessions of a Closet Catholic, came out to good reviews and won the 2006 Sydney Taylor book award for Older Readers. But in the background, my marriage was falling apart, and with it, my confidence in the future—and my writing. After all, isn’t marriage supposed to be for life? And after writing a book that earned out in the first royalty period, aren’t you supposed to be able to sell your next book on proposal?

Maybe in theory, but in practice I’ve learned the hard way that your mileage may vary. And both of those lessons—about marriage and writing—came at the same time, during what I refer to as my “Second Book Blues” period.

Confessions was a middle grade, and both my then editor and agent were telling me to write more middle grade because I “didn’t have a YA voice.”

My editor wanted me to write even younger—as a nine-year-old, something that I had no interest in doing at that point. In the future, maybe. But the stories inside me at that very moment, the ones waiting to be told, had to be young adult, because of their subject matter.

My reaction to being told I can’t do something tells you exactly why I am a young adult author—because the more they told me I couldn’t write YA, the more determined I was to do it. Because I would show them, damn it! *

And thus the Dark Years commenced. I would work on an idea for three months, produce a synopsis and three sample chapters, and… “Sorry it’s not working.” Rejection. I started to wonder if my first book was a fluke. I couldn’t understand what was the matter with me, what was the matter with my writing. I was on a listserv for published YA writers, and it seemed like every week someone was getting a two-book deal based on a paragraph. It tapped into all my high school angst about being a Loser with a Capital L.

Winning the Sydney Taylor award in early January 2006 was a double-edged sword—incredibly validating because it was awarded by librarians, but terrifying at the same time because inside I felt undeserving, a fraud. Did they realize I was such a failure at producing a second book? That if VH-1 had One-Hit Wonders for authors, I’d be on that show—except I’d be a One “Not Exactly a New York Times Best Seller Kind of Hit” Wonder?

When I turned up for my first ever-writing retreat, Kindling Words, in Vermont in January 2006, I was desperate and demoralized. I was in year three of the Never Ending Divorce and it was also coming up on three years since I’d sold Confessions and without another book deal on the horizon.

I was sweating on an exercise machine at 6:30 am with Nancy Werlin and Sarah Aronson in the tiny little workout room at the Inn, whingeing about my career woes. Nancy, who is one of the smartest people I know in the writing world, said, “You’re showing your writing too early.” Sarah agreed. We got into a discussion about selling on proposal vs. writing the whole book first and it hit me that published authors don’t always have to sell on proposal. Okay we hear about all the people who get two-book deals on a paragraph, but that isn’t everyone. And maybe, just maybe, I am not that kind of author. Does that suck cash-flow wise? Yes, it does. Is it more risky? Totally, unless you have an editor that you trust and can touch base with while you’re writing. But what is more soul destroying? Trying to work against type and beating your head up against the wall, or accepting your process and working with it?

I left Kindling Words with the beginning of my new project, which became my second book, Purge. I told my agent I was going to write most of the book before I showed her any of it. I turned off the noise, all the voices that made me feel inadequate and Loser-like (things like unsubscribing to the listserv I was on for a while) and started to listen instead to the voice inside. The one that loved writing for the sake of it, not because she was worried about selling another book. The one who had stories inside that were bursting to be told, if only I would listen.

Do you want to know the biggest irony? After we sold Purge and I’d convinced myself that I was an author who had to write the whole book, my next two books were sold on proposal in a two-book deal. Go figure.

But after Want to Go Private? I needed to do the retreat and turn off the noise tactic again. For a variety of reasons, I chose to write the entire book—I’m now about to start revising my crummy first draft.

In some ways it’s nerve-wracking. But in other ways, it’s allowing me to push myself and explore.

One thing I’ve learned over the course of writing five books (and abandoning countless others) is that every book has a slightly different process. While we all want to keep moving forward, sometimes taking a few steps back helps us figure it out.

*Are you glad you aren’t my mother? Now that I’m the mom of teenagers, I start so many conversations with, “Mom, I know I was a really awful teenager but…” To my mother’s eternal credit, she has only said, “What goes around comes around” once, even though I’m sure she has wanted to waaaaaay more often!

—Sarah Darer Littman

Sarah Darer Littman’s first novel, Confessions of a Closet Catholic, won the 2006 Sydney Taylor Book Award for Older Readers. Her novel Life, After was a 2011 Sydney Taylor Honor Book. She is also the author of Purge and Want to Go Private?, which Entertainment Weekly called “scary and engrossing.”

In addition to writing for teens, Sarah is an award-winning columnist for Hearst Newspapers (CT) and CTNewsJunkie.com.

Sarah lives in Connecticut with her family. Visit her online at sarahdarerlittman.com, wanttogoprivate.com, and on Twitter as @sarahdarerlitt.

EDITED FEB. 19… GIVEAWAY WINNERS ANNOUNCED:

Thank you to everyone who entered the giveaway via the entry form—and thank you to the author for donating the prizes! I’m happy to announce the winners:

Annika won a signed copy of Confessions of a Closet Catholic!

Heather Perkinson won a signed copy of Purge!

Zara D. Garcia-Alvarez won a signed copy of Life, After!

Robin Willis won a signed copy of Want to Go Private?

And there was one winner of the grand prize of signed copies of ALL FOUR of Sarah Darer Littman’s books… and that lucky person is:

Haley won the grand prize of signed copies of all four books!

Congrats to all five of the winners! I’ll email the winners for their mailing addresses. Thank you again to everyone who entered!

Want more in this blog series?

The Turning Points series will continue with new guest posts three times a week. Subscribe to distraction no. 99 to keep up with the series, or read all the posts with this tag.

Here are the posts in the series so far:

• Intro to the Turning Points blog series
• Gayle Forman: on overcoming bitterness
• Sean Ferrell: on the Writer who never arrives
• Eileen Cook: on a “nasty” book and a teacher’s advice that inspired her
• Christopher Barzak: on how short stories changed his vision for his novel
• Saundra Mitchell: on deciding to quit and walk away
• Eric Luper: on not writing for trends
• Gretchen McNeil: on how “everything happens for a reason”
• Julia DeVillers on the fan letter she wrote when she was ten years old that changed her writing career years later
• Daisy Whitney on the book that opened her eyes to writing YA (giveaway open through February 6!)
• Brandy Colbert on the book that inspired her to find her voice (giveaway open through February 8!)
• Courtney Summers on redefining failure (TWO giveaways open through February 10)

You can keep up with all the open giveaways on the giveaways page!

Series images by Robert Roxby.