4.27.2006
TRAMBLINGS. . .
Something a little unusual today. E. LOCKHART, author of FLY ON THE WALL and THE BOYFRIEND LIST, is here with us on a Thursday. We'll still have the regular Q&A tomorrow but this will give you a little more to chew on this weekend. I'm still writing away so don't expect to hear from me until Monday.
1) When you wrote THE BOYFRIEND LIST and FLY ON THE WALL, what did you know for sure about each book?
In both cases I knew the structure -- though what I was thinking structuring a novel as a list, I don't know! A novel is not a list! A list would make a horrible novel ! So I had to work incredibly hard to make the story build and to keep the format fresh in THE BOYFRIEND LIST. In FLY ON THE WALL, I knew my heroine would first be a human, then transform into a fly, then return to being a girl -- no structural problem there. The challenge turned out to be making the fly section dynamic, because the heroine is trapped in the boys' locker room at her high school and essentially unable to do more than observe. With an impotent protagonist, how do you keep a story energized?
2) Is there a single book that has influenced you more than others?
No, but I've been very influenced by amusing prose stylists. ANITA LOOS, P.G. WODEHOUSE, JANE AUSTEN, CHARLES DICKENS, DAVID SEDARIS. People who craft sentences that are so pleasing you just want to read them over and over. I can't claim I reach their levels of ridiculously charming verbosity, but it's good fun trying.
3) How do you find the voice for each of your characters?
I experiment a bit for the first few pages, going back over and reworking them pretty radically. For FLY, I had a more aggressively stylized inner-monologue for the first 30 pages, then realized it wasn't flowing and went back to take out some of the kinks. Then I felt I had found the voice and was ready to go and write the rest of the novel. After a draft or two is done, I go through and filter out my own verbal idiosyncracies -- words like "total" and "actually" etc. that I over-use. Things that date me as a person who learned her slang in the 1980s. Often I'll layer in some amusingly odd verbal tics and behaviors for my character at that point. There are a lot of goofy euphemisms in FLY ON THE WALL -- when Gretchen is looking at boys in the locker room, and when the boys are accusing each other of homosexuality. I layered those in once an initial draft was finished.
4) Have you ever considered a writing project a complete failure? How do you avoid that sort of thinking?
I have many projects that haven't been published, yes. But I think working on them is part of my growth towards being a better writer. There will be other projects, so I just roll with it.
5) What other artistic mediums influence your writing? Music? Film? Art?
In the case of FLY ON THE WALL, comic books. I tried for a style that would give something of the abbreviated yet emotional, action-packed feeling of reading a good comic.
6) Grace Paley said, "Write what you know about what you don't know." Have you ever applied that? Give an example.
I think of it as "Write what you know to be emotionally true." That is, you aren't limited to what you know as in you aren't limited to writing about your everyday life. FLY ON THE WALL takes place in a boys' locker room. I have never been in one. I think Paley is saying we should feel free to write what interests us, wherever our imagination takes us, but we must put what we know about people -- about feelings -- into that imaginary realm.
7) Are there stories that you, or your family, have deemed off-limits?
I tell stories about my family all the time, but I am writing fiction. They are so radically transposed I don't think anyone would recognize themselves. What I am really writing about are the emotions, the dynamics between people.
8) What has been the most rewarding part of the publishing process? The most frustrating?
I write full time. I have books coming out every year for the next few years. After struggling for a long time, patching together a life with teaching and other jobs, I find it most rewarding to be solidly employed. The most frustrating part is when a book doesn't have good support from the publisher.
9) Do you do any writing besides fiction? Nonfiction? Screenwriting? Songwriting? Poetry?
For a good while I wrote lyrics for musical comedy -- though never for pay. I love doing that. I hope I can return to it some day.
10) Have you read anything lately, specifically fiction, that just knocked your socks off? Share with us and give us the name of a writer whom you think has been ignored.
The novel N JUDAH, by LEN JENKIN. It's very beautiful and strange. However, since I write for teenagers, I should also add SAVING FRANCESCA, by MELINA MARCHETTA. Its a great book, and very very funny, and though I know she's popular in her native Australia, I don't think young people have really discovered her here.
Check out E. Lockhart's great WEBSITE and BLOG.
Until next time. . .
Something a little unusual today. E. LOCKHART, author of FLY ON THE WALL and THE BOYFRIEND LIST, is here with us on a Thursday. We'll still have the regular Q&A tomorrow but this will give you a little more to chew on this weekend. I'm still writing away so don't expect to hear from me until Monday.
1) When you wrote THE BOYFRIEND LIST and FLY ON THE WALL, what did you know for sure about each book?
In both cases I knew the structure -- though what I was thinking structuring a novel as a list, I don't know! A novel is not a list! A list would make a horrible novel ! So I had to work incredibly hard to make the story build and to keep the format fresh in THE BOYFRIEND LIST. In FLY ON THE WALL, I knew my heroine would first be a human, then transform into a fly, then return to being a girl -- no structural problem there. The challenge turned out to be making the fly section dynamic, because the heroine is trapped in the boys' locker room at her high school and essentially unable to do more than observe. With an impotent protagonist, how do you keep a story energized?
2) Is there a single book that has influenced you more than others?
No, but I've been very influenced by amusing prose stylists. ANITA LOOS, P.G. WODEHOUSE, JANE AUSTEN, CHARLES DICKENS, DAVID SEDARIS. People who craft sentences that are so pleasing you just want to read them over and over. I can't claim I reach their levels of ridiculously charming verbosity, but it's good fun trying.
3) How do you find the voice for each of your characters?
I experiment a bit for the first few pages, going back over and reworking them pretty radically. For FLY, I had a more aggressively stylized inner-monologue for the first 30 pages, then realized it wasn't flowing and went back to take out some of the kinks. Then I felt I had found the voice and was ready to go and write the rest of the novel. After a draft or two is done, I go through and filter out my own verbal idiosyncracies -- words like "total" and "actually" etc. that I over-use. Things that date me as a person who learned her slang in the 1980s. Often I'll layer in some amusingly odd verbal tics and behaviors for my character at that point. There are a lot of goofy euphemisms in FLY ON THE WALL -- when Gretchen is looking at boys in the locker room, and when the boys are accusing each other of homosexuality. I layered those in once an initial draft was finished.
4) Have you ever considered a writing project a complete failure? How do you avoid that sort of thinking?
I have many projects that haven't been published, yes. But I think working on them is part of my growth towards being a better writer. There will be other projects, so I just roll with it.
5) What other artistic mediums influence your writing? Music? Film? Art?
In the case of FLY ON THE WALL, comic books. I tried for a style that would give something of the abbreviated yet emotional, action-packed feeling of reading a good comic.
6) Grace Paley said, "Write what you know about what you don't know." Have you ever applied that? Give an example.
I think of it as "Write what you know to be emotionally true." That is, you aren't limited to what you know as in you aren't limited to writing about your everyday life. FLY ON THE WALL takes place in a boys' locker room. I have never been in one. I think Paley is saying we should feel free to write what interests us, wherever our imagination takes us, but we must put what we know about people -- about feelings -- into that imaginary realm.
7) Are there stories that you, or your family, have deemed off-limits?
I tell stories about my family all the time, but I am writing fiction. They are so radically transposed I don't think anyone would recognize themselves. What I am really writing about are the emotions, the dynamics between people.
8) What has been the most rewarding part of the publishing process? The most frustrating?
I write full time. I have books coming out every year for the next few years. After struggling for a long time, patching together a life with teaching and other jobs, I find it most rewarding to be solidly employed. The most frustrating part is when a book doesn't have good support from the publisher.
9) Do you do any writing besides fiction? Nonfiction? Screenwriting? Songwriting? Poetry?
For a good while I wrote lyrics for musical comedy -- though never for pay. I love doing that. I hope I can return to it some day.
10) Have you read anything lately, specifically fiction, that just knocked your socks off? Share with us and give us the name of a writer whom you think has been ignored.
The novel N JUDAH, by LEN JENKIN. It's very beautiful and strange. However, since I write for teenagers, I should also add SAVING FRANCESCA, by MELINA MARCHETTA. Its a great book, and very very funny, and though I know she's popular in her native Australia, I don't think young people have really discovered her here.
Check out E. Lockhart's great WEBSITE and BLOG.
Until next time. . .
