Last year, when I was deep into writing 17 & Gone, I discovered an exciting new distraction and way to collect images that fascinated me: Pinterest. What started off as maybe one more thing to keep me from writing turned into a great source of inspiration, and my 17 & Gone inspiration board was born. I’d often write with the images up on my screen, staring at them in pauses between paragraphs.
So I was delighted when Penguin suggested I highlight ten images from my inspiration board and share them on a blog tour. On each stop on the blog tour I highlighted one of the photos that spoke to me and helped me find my way through the darkness of writing this book. Now, I wanted to collect all the inspirations in one place.
Below are details from the ten images—and below that are some lines I wrote inspired by looking at the images.
Images:
(Click the thumbnail to see the story behind each image.)
Lines:
(Click the line to see the image that inspired it.)
Thanks for entering my head and taking a peek at my inspirations. Don’t you love when other art forms—and other artists—inspire you? Next, I may share some songs.
I’m unabashedly excited to tell you that my new novel, 17 & Gone, is out in stores TODAY RIGHT NOW IT’S REALLY HAPPENED*, and to celebrate its release you may have noticed that this blog has been taken over by memories. Some very honest memories from some of my fellow YA authors, revealing what haunted them when they were 17, just as my 17-year-old narrator in the book is haunted herself by missing girls who push her to uncover their stories. It’s only fair, since I’ve asked so much of everyone else, if I tell you what haunted me when I was 17.
I happen to know, because I went digging around in my closet over the weekend and found this:
That is a folder containing my typewritten poems and short stories, many of which were written when I was 17 years old. And there’s something you should know about me: Before my published novels, before I had an editor to contain me and my own experience as a writer to pre-edit myself, pretty much everything I wrote, no matter if I called it fiction, was purely, unapologetically, and undeniably though I did try to deny it, one single thing:
Autobiographical.
So I can tell you without a shadow of a doubt what haunted me back then…
Danger.
I sensed it coming for me. And if it didn’t hit me, maybe it would veer off and take someone else, but it was coming. I felt it. It’s infused in every line I wrote back then, the threat that had something to do with the body I was made to live in. The girl I was, and what men in the world did to girls. All I knew was that no boy—no male I’d ever known—could be trusted.
Is that honest enough for you? That’s the raw truth of who I was at 17, and speaks to what haunted me.
Other things I knew: That no one understood.
That out there, somewhere, would be understanding and an adult life I’d make for myself.
When I was 17, it felt so far away—my future, my real life—and the months, weeks, days, day after day after day, I’d have to exist in that place before I graduated high school were the longest months, weeks, days I’ve ever lived.
Sometimes I fantasizing about vanishing.
I knew these two girls who were planning to run. The two of them in a used car, whatever cash they could scrape together, and all the clothes they could fit in the trunk and on the backseat. They’d head to New Orleans, maybe. They’d head south, stop somewhere once it turned warm. They were 17, as I was, and they’d had enough of this shit. They didn’t even think it was worth staying to finish high school.
I heard them talk of their big, romantic plans for running away, and I wondered if I’d ever see them again.
I pictured it in my mind: the car on a highway at night, the windows down, the music up, the parents back at home pasting Missing flyers to telephone poles, and the two runaways down in New Orleans hanging curtains in their new apartment and studying for the GED. I went home, to our latest rental where my stepfather raged, locked myself in my room, and fantasized about saving enough money to break my mom and siblings out of there and be able to talk and laugh in the dining room, to open our doors, to live like other families lived. Simple things that sound silly to type now. I’d forgotten.
But I also imagined running.
Imagined leaving and never looking back. I only went so far as to imagine.
I was a coward, see. I was chicken. This is what I told myself.
I would never actually consider running away.
I couldn’t abandon my mother. I couldn’t leave my baby sister, who I adored like she was my own. I couldn’t even keep a secret from my mom, let alone worry her by staying out without telling her where I was for a single right. And how would I get out of town, anyway? It’s not like I had my own used car to stuff full of my belongings and point south. All the money I made at my job at the day-care center went toward saving for college, because that to me would be my escape. Besides, knowing I couldn’t afford a car, I’d never bothered to learn to drive.
And what was out there, in the world beyond the Hudson Valley? What would happen to a 17-year-old girl who just went running?
If people couldn’t be trusted here, imagine what it was like out there. Imagine.
As I remember, the two girls I knew stuck around. Maybe they ran away for a whole weekend, maybe longer, but it wasn’t for forever, let alone long enough to be alarming. Because the next time I saw them, they were there as always. They were home. Safe. I don’t even know if they made it to New Orleans for sightseeing.
But the idea stuck with me. A girl who just goes, disappears. It’s something I’ve been writing about for twenty years.
I think it was the only way I thought I could control anything.
What haunted me at 17 is all there, in 17 & Gone. I mean, you can see it even in the title, can’t you? Every piece of me from back then is in that book. I wanted to run, but I never did. I wanted to be strong, but I wasn’t. I wanted to fight for myself and for the girls I saw falling around me, but I didn’t know how to speak up.
At the same time I was digging around in my closet this weekend discovering that old folder of poems tied with ribbons, I was also watching and reading the news. The Steubenville verdict and the media feeling sorry for rapists’ futures without thought for the girl, and the disgusting victim-blaming comments about how the girl shouldn’t have been drinking, as if she’d wanted it, as if even if she hadn’t it was her fault… all this, it sent me spiraling back to 17.
It’s all there in what I wrote: What men yelled out car windows. What men said I wasn’t smart enough, or talented enough, or worthy enough to do. What boys lied about in the dark. What boys acted like under light of day. What guys wanted me to do when they had me alone. What people thought I did even when I didn’t. And pieces too. Like the night I got so fall-down, blackout drunk at a friend’s house that I can’t even tell you now all of what happened except in uncomfortable flashes. And that I had a boyfriend the next morning, and it took me six months to break up with him.
17-year-old me saw threats everywhere, and they all centered in on who and what I was: a girl. A girl in a world that wasn’t always kind to girls.
And yet she flirted with the idea of danger. Things she did. Things she almost-did. Things that could have killed her.
What’s all the more frightening now is looking back and seeing how close I came to so many bad things. I was standing with my toes over the edge of the cliff—just my toes dangling—and any little rush of a breeze could have knocked me over into the gorge. (The cliff metaphor is less a metaphor and more a connection to the physical landscape where I lived when I was 17, in Woodstock, in the Catskill Mountains you’ll find in 17 & Gone and in my previous book Imaginary Girls, there where we spent nights at actual cliffs and where I have stood, quite literally, with my toes on the edge and a push away from falling.)
I’ve written about this before—my urgent need to escape. But I didn’t remember my fears until now, until I saw those typewritten pages spelling it all out.
The girl I was at 17 was obsessed with the vivid fears that run through 17 & Gone. It’s as if I wrote the book for her, decades too late.
Or maybe it’s not too late. Maybe all my fears from back then needed to be channeled into something for right now, today.
Still, I wish I could tell her: She wasn’t a coward. She wasn’t chicken. She was right not to trust them—and one day, sooner than she’d guess, she’d find someone she could trust, in her real life, that did begin once she left that town.
And to assure her, somehow, if I could have, that she’d make it out when the time was right. I—and this book I wrote—are living proof she did.
There. That was as deep as I could go with my haunting without revealing too much and scaring you away. Now that I confessed what haunted me at 17, I hope you’ll look out for the book, on sale today! And keep an eye on this blog, too—there are more “Haunted at 17” posts coming from my fellow YA authors in the next couple of days to help me celebrate release week!
* Also, please pardon my all-caps excitement at the head of this post. It’s never easy, this writing-an-idea-into-a-book-that-makes-it-to-being-published thing, and I don’t think I ever believe it will actually come to fruition until the day arrives and the book is out and no one can grab it back from me and tell me I was only dreaming.
(Am I dreaming?)
(If I’m dreaming, please don’t pinch me yet because I’d like it to last all day.)
MORE HAUNTINGS
Don’t miss the other posts in the series. Throughout the week, more YA authors will reveal what haunted them at 17. Here are the Haunted at 17 posts so far…
Feel inspired and want to share what haunted you at 17? If you write a post on your blog, leave a link or tweet it to me. I’ll send you some 17 & Gone swag if you’d like it, and I’ll be featuring all the posts in a round-up on Monday!
You don’t have to be a writer to take part in this. All you have to be is someone who was once 17.
GIVEAWAY!
Want to win a signed hardcover of 17 & Gone, some swag, and a signed hardcover of Imaginary Girls to keep it company? Every commenter on this Haunted at 17 post will be entered to win. You can also enter by filling out this entry form.
The giveaway is international. Closes 11:59 p.m. EST on Thursday, March 28. Two winners will be chosen.
17 & GONE NEWS:
If you’ll be in New York City for the NYC Teen Author Festival, come see me and get a signed copy of the book! Full schedule here—look out for me on Friday, March 22 at the Union Square Barnes & Noble or Saturday, March 23 at McNally Jackson or Sunday, March 24 at Books of Wonder!
The 17 & Gone Blog Tour is all about the images from my Pinterest inspiration board that I made while writing the book. The latest stop at The Compulsive Reader features an image about waking nightmares.
Kristina Perez has interviewed me for her Madeleine Project. Come find out my answers to some of the most important questions.
If you’ve pre-ordered 17 & Gone or plan to buy it this week (thank you so much for your support! it means the world to me!) and can’t be in New York City to get it signed, I have a way to sign your book from afar. Leave a comment on this photo on my Facebook author page and I may just mail you a signed and personalized bookplate.
It’s a thrilling, humbling, exciting moment when an author you admire speaks out and vouches for you with a beautiful blurb. I am so excited to share this blurb for 17 & Gone from Kiersten White, who read the book and liked it so much that she actually reached out and offered (and I shrieked and squealed and thanked her effusively, and will probably tackle her with a hug if I ever get the chance to meet her at a book event), because when an author you admire says kind words about your book, there is nothing like it. Because she said this:
“17 & Gone is a sharply compelling story of what happens when we stop seeing what’s in front of us and start looking for what’s already gone. Intricately plotted and surreally imagined… Suma breaks reality and twists it back together in a devastating and beautiful new form.”
—Kiersten White, bestselling author of Paranormalcy and Mind Games
Thank you so much, Kiersten!! I am THRILLED!
On a more personal note, I also wish I could share with you a few of the crazed, awesome, and hilarious text messages I got from a friend and author I adore yesterday as she was finishing reading 17 & Gone. (Can a stream of text messages be “blurbed” on the back cover of a book, too? Heh. I’d share them here, but I haven’t asked permission.)
Speaking of 17 & Gone, I have seenirrefutableevidence that the ARCs I signed at the Penguin offices are trickling out into the world. (My expression in that last photo is hilarious.) Not only are the ARCs signed, they all include a letter from me. Thank you for the people who’ve gotten ARCs and tweeted me a picture. I love it!
(Featured image connected with this post thanks to @NereydaG1003!)
This morning I went to my usual cafe, stepped in, saw the blank bagel board, then stomped off in a rage* because there were no bagels left. I took a long detour to another cafe on the Bowery all so I could calmly sit and freewrite with a toasted sesame bagel and a skim mocha**. I’ve started this new thing where, instead of blogging because this is so public, I write secret things in a secret file to myself at the start of every morning. These secret things are about my secret new novel. I haven’t even shown pages to my agent yet (though he knows they’re coming!), that’s how secret it is. But it was while writing these secrets that I had some of those grateful nostalgic thoughts I get sometimes when I realize where I am.
Cue the requisite soundtrack:
You see, it was always my dream to live here. In fact, I wanted to live here before I wanted to be a writer. And now I’m here. And writing. And it’s kind of happening all at once and I forget sometimes, when I’m focused on silly worries or other negative things I shouldn’t bother thinking about, I forget. Then I have a morning like today’s bagel-delicious morning and an afternoon in which I (1) get to meet and have lunch with my awesome new publicist, (2) go to my publisher’s office to sign my name dozens of times on books I’ve written that are actually about to be published, (3) check wonderfully thorough proofreader’s comments on the pages of my book that is actually going to be published, and (4) visit with my wise—and endlessly amusing—editor who is actually publishing a book I wrote.
Forgive me for this post. Feeling cheerful today.
I signed all these in no time:
Yes, this means if you’re one of the people who gets an ARC for review from Penguin—or, I’ve heard, by winning a future contest on Goodreads!—it will be signed. And some of them will be stuffed with surprise bookmarks.
There are a small number of ARCs floating around now, but all those ARCs I just signed won’t be going out until the end of November… December. Not tomorrow, but soon!
All in all, was a pretty great day. 🙂
___
* I really love bagels.
** I started drinking mochas again, but dont worry, I’ll give them up once more when I go away on my writing retreat November 2.
I mentioned this yesterday, but here is a post to say this and only this:
I’m notoriously private about my novels and rarely show people until my book is edited and done. This is because so much changes in the editing, and I like having only a very few people know the early stages of what the novel was in the beginning. My editor makes me look better than I am, and I’d like to keep it that way. But even beyond that, I’m kind of superstitious about talking about novels in specifics before they’re complete (not including with E, my agent, or my editor—they get to know… other people, I’d rather they not know, no offense). Talking about a novel too soon can deflate it and sap its magic. Talking about a novel too soon with the wrong person—even if that person means no harm—can ruin the whole novel, for me. Some people’s ideas flourish by talking. Mine like to be kept secret and private until the time comes to let them out into the light.
Told you I’m superstitious!
But I can talk about 17 & Gone now—not only because it’s done, but because, as of yesterday, some of its pages have been released into the world and people I don’t know—anyone who wants to!—can read them. I’m kind of freaked out. Excited, yes, and freaked—can’t I be both?
So here, excite me and freak me out further and go read the opening chapters of 17 & Gone in the Penguin Teen Spring 2013 Preview:
I’m spending the month of August in limbo. Part of this is due to my Macbook breaking, which kind of derailed my plan to spend all of August offline at a café writing retreat of my own making, but I will restrain myself from complaining about that here. (And also, as of yesterday, E fixed it enough for me to be able to use Scrivener to write!! MS Word I can’t use, so I can’t freelance right now.)
Besides, my feeling of being in limbo is so much more than my computer blahs.
My newest book—17 & Gone—is about to slip out of my fingers. This very weekend is my last chance to look at the pages and make changes before it releases for ARCs. This is that frightening moment when the book is still mine and part of me doesn’t want to let it go just yet, and the other part of me wants to set it flying and share it and see what happens, and these two parts jumble up together to make me so conflicted and confused, I really don’t know what I want anymore except to carry the pages around with me all weekend.
I will have to let go, obviously. I have to give any final comments to my publisher on Monday. Then the interior will be released to make ARCs. And then I guess the terror, um I mean the excitement, yay!, sets in.
It’s different this time, for me. The first time, with Dani Noir, I wasn’t a part of any author community or connected to bloggers or reviewers or anything. (This was before Twitter was a big thing!) So when there were ARCs, I gave one to my mom and kept one for myself and just waited for reviews to come in from places like Kirkus and Publishers Weekly, and that was pretty much the extent of my nerves. Not much was made of the book, and barely anyone knew of it, so there wasn’t anything to expect or wish for. The first time I knew someone was reading was when a coworker came downstairs to tell me she’d reviewed it on Goodreads (and she liked it!), and that was handled all to my face and seemed small and contained, and easier to deal with.
There was the book. And there was me. And I was able to separate the two without much issue.
My second experience with ARCs was with Imaginary Girls, and this was far more intense. There were more expectations—on my part, because this was the book of my heart, and on the part of others involved because I had an agent this time and this time I had a publisher who was more invested in the book. More ARCs were printed, more people were paying attention. Then the reactions started coming, some awesome and blush-inducing, but also I guess maybe some people thought the book was one thing (more straightforward? Not paranormal… or more obviously paranormal? Easily able to fit into a certain kind of box? I am not sure) and their reactions were sometimes more about that than what the book actually was. Also, at this point, Twitter was in full-force, and I was a Goodreads Author, so the reviews were more in my face—like right there in my face, being rated and tweeted with me tagged so I couldn’t help but see—and this affected my experience and excitement. I felt steeped in it and unable to escape. Even the little things, like if I knew someone—an author I admired, for instance—had read the book and never said a word about it, I felt sure I knew what that meant and knew what s/he truly thought and I buried this and felt worse about myself. This changed my feelings of achievement of having a book published to something more conflicted and mealy and spotted and, yes, truly fantastic at times and other times kind of ugly because it exposed all my worst insecurities and silly ability to hear only the bad things, like that scene from Pretty Woman. It was an experience in extremes.
You see, this time there was the book. And there was me. And they were—to my detriment—one and the same.
And I guess I never got over it. Ever since those moments when Imaginary Girls entered the world and people started reading it—starting with the day ARCs were released and then through all the months that followed, with trade reviews and reader reviews and the months after the book came out—my writing was filtered through that noise. I questioned everything. About my writing. About my personal taste. About my style. About who I was. I lost my confidence and sense of self-assurance. I had an exceptionally difficult time writing, and I still am having a hard time. I lost the ease.
My writing suffered immensely from this, which is absolutely and entirely my fault.
So you can see why having 17 & Gone become an ARC has me full of nerves right now.
On a smaller scale, all this reminds me of workshops in my MFA program. I got off easily at Columbia University; some workshops were cruel, and more than once I discovered the writers crying in bathroom stalls after class. But for the most part during my time in grad school, people were constructive but kind to me—never cruel, never making me question my entire being and think of giving up writing, which happened to some students I know. (Aside from my experience with my thesis, which I’ll leave aside for now.) I was one of the youngest students in the program, fresh from my tiny college in the Midwest, and such a newbie and used to praise, so it’s surprising that I wasn’t crushed my first month there. But I remember one workshop where my piece was getting praised and good suggestions were being made around the giant rectangle table in Dodge Hall overlooking the beautiful university campus… until we came to the guy sitting beside me to my right.
He was usually a soft-spoken guy. But that day, he spat out his reactions with brutal honesty. He hated my piece. Hated it. Hated my voice. Hated the subject matter. Hated the title. Hated the character. Hated the setting. Probably hated the font, too, who knows. Really he hated it all, and he had quite detailed reasons as to why. I don’t remember the reasons. I don’t even remember the piece itself for sure. What I remember is his impassioned hatred for my writing, and how close he was sitting to me in the room, so I could feel this hatred radiating off of him in waves.
But then some other students in class passionately defended me, and stood up for my work, arguing with him on my behalf, for my piece and for me as a writer—my style, my voice. I remember one guy in particular, across the table from me, who loved the piece so much and thought it was the best thing I’d written all year. (I couldn’t stand up for myself at that point; we were not allowed to talk while being workshopped; only to take in and listen.) But afterward, I remember being just as stunned by the students who loved my work enough to defend me as by the person who hated it so much. It was the same piece. We were all in the same room. It was a lesson in extremes, one I know we authors face all the time when it comes to reviews.
Even so, after that jarring workshop, I kept on the way I was. I still wrote the way I wrote, about the characters and places I liked to write about. The voice I had when I was 22 and just starting out at Columbia has been honed and polished and grown as I’ve grown, I hope, but it’s the same root voice I had in the beginning. I didn’t let that guy’s hate affect my writing. I simply knew it wasn’t his thing, and that was fine. So what’s different now?
A year or so after that memorable workshop, I remember being at a party with the guy who despised my writing, and then taking a cab home. The cab was packed, and he was in the front seat. He was turning around in his seat, being nice to me and joking and kind of normal, like we were friends or something—because, maybe, to him, that first-year workshop was gone and forgotten, or at least not something he thought about every time he looked at me. Maybe because he was mature and could separate the writing from the person who wrote it. But the thing is, I hadn’t forgotten, so I was reserved with him and didn’t want to be friendly that night. I guess I’d taken it personally. Even now, when I hear about his published books, I don’t wish him ill or anything, but I’m not a supporter of his. I’ve bought many books written by my MFA classmates, pretty much every one I’ve seen in a store. But not his. I’ll always remember him for being my most impassioned hater, so I have no interest in reading what he’s writing now.
I think of this a lot when it comes time for my books to be read and reviewed. How there will be extreme reactions. How some people will hate what I’ve done just as much as some people might just love it. How I have no control either way. And how all I can control is my reaction and behavior—and my knowledge of reviews, by staying away from Goodreads, which I do, and Amazon, which I do, and not clicking blog reviews, which I do not click unless told by someone I trust to read it. But more, I should be like 22-year-old me. I can remember the bad reactions all I want.
But I should not let it affect my writing, or my confidence.
So this is where my nerves about 17 & Gone come in. Soon the book will be yours—no longer mine. Soon you can read it and see what you think, and I do hope you read it and are honest about what you think. And speaking of, if you want to request an ARC, here’s a place where you can.
Look… we are so close! The book is almost yours:
And while all that is going on, I just want to keep my eyes on my own paper and keep writing.
After writing this post and getting this all out, I’m weirdly excited to reach this next step. Which I’ll take as a good sign that I’ve grown as a writer and as a person.
I continue to put my all into revising 17 & Gone and I’m thrilled to say I finished my draft around midnight last night and then sent it in. My entire body ached. Every muscle. How this is even possible from sitting in various chairs (café chair, wheelie chair at writing space, wheelie chair at home) for hours on end is beyond me… It’s not like I’m writing and doing gymnastics at the same time… though it feels that way. EXHAUSTED. I felt like I was sinking into the mattress when I collapsed into bed last night, and I’m still in a daze a whole day after. But did you catch the good stuff?
I finished another draft of my book!
That means I’m that much closer to being done and on to copyediting and on to ARCs! (Which, if you are are blogger or librarian who reviews YA novels, you can still get on this list to request an ARC of 17 & Gone when they become available here.)
In my post-draft delirium I witnessed two exciting things happen today.
The first is that 17 & Gone was mentioned in Publishers Weekly‘s Spring 2013 Sneak Preview—scroll down and down until you come to Penguin/Dutton. (And just wait till I tell you about the book mentioned with mine—The Different Girl by Gordon Dahlquist—a manuscript I recommended to my editor because I fell in love with it after a train ride home from a writers colony! I’m so excited about Gordon’s book, you have no idea. I’ll save it for another post when the cover and summary are both out so I can tell you all about this amazing novel by my friend, but in the meantime add it to your Goodreads shelf. Thank me later.)
And the second thing that happened while I continued to be in a post-draft delirium this afternoon, was this odd piece of news someone told me about on Twitter: Malia and Sasha Obama went to the Strand Bookstore in New York City and bought some books to read. GUESS WHAT ONE OF THOSE BOOKS WAS. I am not kidding. I thought it was a joke at first, but here, it’s on People.com!
I really hope Malia and Sasha like Imaginary Girls. It’s a book I wrote for my sister—and I love more than anything when sisters read it. My sister and I are both so exciting about this!
What a delirious day, no?
Come to think of it… I’m so tired… my eyes can’t focus… I am actually not sure if I even woke up today? Do you think I’m still asleep, still dreaming?