Blogfest 2009

Whenever people ask me who my favorite authors are, I have a very hard time answering the question. Not just because I have so many favorites. It’s more because I tend to really, really love one particular book an author has written, but I don’t necessarily love everything the author has written, at least not on that same intense level. Because when I love something, I looooove something so much I want to just cry for no reason. So here are some of my favorite books, oldies but goodies first. I Capture the Castle by Dodie Smith (I have not one but TWO first editions of this book! One was a Christmas gift from my beloved editor), Rebecca by Daphne Du Maurier, Gone With the Wind by Margaret Mitchell, To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee (duh!). Newer favorites: A True and Faithful Narrative by Katherine Sturtevant, The Time Traveler’s Wife by Audrey Niffenegger, each and every Harry Potter book by J.K. Rowling, The Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins, Never Let Me Go by Kazuo Ishiguro.

The short answer: Tons. The longer answer is a little more complicated. I work and rework a scene maybe dozens of times. Sometimes I make little changes, like a word here or there, and sometimes I change the entire feel and rhythm and structure of a scene. The part of the book I take the most time getting right is the beginning. Beginnings are so important, and they are also so darn difficult. You want to hit all the right notes, you want your reader to be in your world right away. Mostly, you just want the reader to keep reading.

My process is to make changes and edits as I write a first draft. Some writers are able to write straight through a draft without looking back, but not me. I am always in the rearview mirror, making adjustments and trying to polish and refine. I just have to make those changes as I go, or the whole thing ends up jumbled and mixed up. By the time I am finished with that “first” draft, I’ve probably changed the story a million times and it’s pretty close to looking like what the final draft will look like.

If I had it my way, I would tinker with my books forever. Even now, I’ll look at Shug and see something I wish I could change just ever-so-slightly. It’s hard to ever really be done with a thing.

I wish I could say I have cool hobbies like skydiving and snowboarding.  Or spelunking or trapeze.  I’m sorry to tell you, I’m just not that active a girl.  I mean, I like to swim.  Or rather, I like to splash around in the pool and then lay out and read magazines and drink soda.  I really like those things.  I’m just not an extreme sport kind of person.  I like to watch basketball (college hoops, specifically), but I don’t like to play basketball.  I also like to bake cookies—lest you think I’m the most boring person in the world, I will add that I like trying out new cookie recipes.  I’m obsessed with finding the BEST recipe—as in, the BEST chocolate chip cookie, the BEST macaroni and cheese, the BEST brownie.  Other hobbies include: collecting pretty stationery, collecting Hollywood Legends stamps (for example: Audrey Hepburn, Judy Garland), going to heartwarming plays, watching really good TV, reading trashy magazines like Us Weekly but also sprinkling in more literary fare like The Atlantic.  Also: being on the Internet all day, creating playlists for every occasion (Good Morning music, Sleepytime music, Happy Subway music, etc) buying new lipsticks, singing Karaoke—currently on rotation: Our Song by Taylor Swift, The Leader of the Pack by The Shangri-Las.  There!  Now you know everything there is to know about me.

I know exactly what superpower I would pick. It’s actually a riff on a talent I already have—and that is the power of TIME. Meaning, I almost always know what time it is, within a minute or two. It’s not the fanciest of talents, but it comes in handy. However! If I was a superhero and my power was time, I would wear a cute little outfit with a cape and a fancy diamond encrusted watch. The power would entail me stopping time, speeding up time, and slowing down time. So if somebody was falling out of a building, or there was a nuclear bomb about to launch over New York City, I could stop time and figure out how to keep those things from happening. I would also be able to do time travel, which has always been a dream of mine. I would pop into the 20s and go to a speakeasy and dance all night. Or I would go to the 60s and wear my hair in a high ponytail and go to the soda fountain and listen to The Shirelles. I would also probably pop in at a civil rights rally, see The Beatles in concert, and go to one of those bungalow colonies like in Dirty Dancing. Pretty groovy superpower, right?

The first book I ever wrote was a picture book called The Dream. I was in the third grade, and all year, we had been working on our books. We wrote and we illustrated and we made our very own covers. Mine was about a girl who wakes up one day and her mother tells her that her whole family is moving to Connecticut. Her annoying little sister Robyn (aka my annoying little sister Susan) is thrilled, but our main character whose name escapes me is not thrilled. She will miss all her friends, of course. On the first day at her new school, she “feels like a ghost.” That is, until some mean girls try to beat her up. Then she wakes up and realizes it was all a dream! Hence, the title. Basically, the title gives away the whole story. But it did win first place in Mrs. Burris’s class, so that’s something!