Writing is a passion. Publishing is a business.

LISA PAPADEMETRIOU

Interview with Lisa Papademetriou

Lisa was born August 25, 1971 in Houston, Texas. After graduating from Vassar College, she lived in Guatemala City, Guatemala, where she taught English in a bilingual school. When she came back to the United States, she moved to New York City, where she worked a series of editorial jobs at various publishers, including Scholastic, Inc., HarperCollins Publishers, Disney Press, and what is now Alloy. She then decided that I wanted to be a big-shot businesswoman and enrolled in New York University’s Stern School of Business, but after a year, she decided that big-shotting wasn’t all it was cracked up to be, so she left to write full-time.

What are you reading right now?

EVERYTHING! I’m an MFA student at Vermont College of Fine Arts, and I have to read approximately a book a day. Right now, I’m studying verse novels. I recently read LOCOMOTION, EXPOSED, and MAKE LEMONADE—all of which are fantastic. Also A STEP FROM HEAVEN, which is utterly beautiful. Drop everything and read it right away!

What first sparked your interest in writing?

Reading. I remember reading THE CHRONICLES OF NARIA and thinking, Someone—a writer—wrote this. I want to do that when I grow up.

What do you love the most about writing? The least?

What I love most about writing is the dreaming/ reading/ thinking part. I love imagining characters and how they feel and their thoughts. What I hate is getting reviewed. When you spend years working on something, to have someone dismiss it with a sentence is extremely painful. And even when people like your book, being reviewed has an unpleasant beauty-pageant feeling to it. It turns the book into a thing to be evaluated, rather than a work of art to be pondered.

Tell us a little about your writing process.

First I need an idea. I never know when it will pop up, but when it does, I never bother to write it down, because if it’s good, it will hang around and try to meet other good ideas. Next comes general staring out a window, followed by reading a few books that I can reasonably claim as “research.” Then, hopefully, a second idea will show up. You really need two ideas for any book—one for a character, one for an incident or conflict or ending. Okay, once I have my two ideas, I try to rub them together. Then I stare out the window some more, maybe go for a walk, maybe chat about the idea with someone. If other people are interested, I know it has potential, so I’ll start working on an outline. For me, an outline is a scene-by-scene breakdown of everything that happens in the novel. It is, frankly, easier to muck about rearranging things and changing them in an outline than it is after a draft. Then I start the long slog through the first draft. Then I revise. Then I revise again. Repeat until done!

What are your passions?

Social justice, writing, reading, dogs, my darling daughter, my sweet husband, the Oxford comma, and Martha Stewart Living magazine (embarrassing, but true).

What inspires you?

What inspires me are fans. They write me E-mails, and sometimes they tell me that they bought the book with their own money. When I think about that—about a reader choosing to spend her money on my books instead of someone else’s, or something else that she might want—I know I have to work as hard as I can to make sure she cares about the characters and enjoys the book.

Why fantasy?
I love fantasy. LOVE! It’s the oldest genre (think mythology), and I think a lot of people sort of have it in their DNA, as I do. Unfortunately for me, I don’t really pick and choose the stories I write—they just come to me in pieces, and I start putting them together, and I get interested in them and then I can’t stop. I also write humorous tween books (which I also love to write) that sell really well, and my editors, of course, always want more of that. But…oh, well. I also write fantasy. I can’t help it!

>Why young adult?

I don’t really believe that “young adult” is a writing genre. It’s more of a marketing genre. If your book is about young characters, it’s now published as young adult. If GREAT EXPECTATIONS, TO KILL A MOCKINGBIRD, or—arguably—WUTHERING HEIGHTS published today, the editors and marketers would want them in the YA section. Well, after that ramble, I guess the real answer is, “I dunno. That’s just my brain!”

How was SIREN’S STORM born?


SIREN’S STORM jumps right into the story with a peculiar car collision and a tragic backstory. Did the book always begin there or did it take numerous drafts to find the right starting point?

This is an excellent question, because it gets at something that is always a challenge for writers (and by writers, I mean “me”)—finding a good opening. The way I work is different from most writers, in that I am a hard-core outliner. Still, I often find that the opening scene I had planned in the outline just isn’t compelling once it’s written. So I try not to worry about the first scene until the second draft. I’ll just write a junk opening and then go back and find a better scene after the whole novel is done. That said, SIREN’S STORM is one case in which I saw the opening right away and very clearly, and I still think it’s one of the best scenes in the book.

Obviously, you didn’t create the concepts of sirens or Furies, but in what ways did you take literary license and tweak these beings for your own world?

I went back to the original ODYSSEY and was shocked to discover that a Siren wasn’t a mermaid at all—it was a creature with the body of a fierce bird and the face of a woman. Over time, others changed them to be half-woman, half-fish. Every author tweaks these creations, I guess. For the Sirens, I wanted to get at their backstory, to think about how it might be that some people could think they were birds, some fish. I created a tale-within-a-tale about their evolution. As for the Furies, their history is extremely vague and even conflicting. I tried to simply take the nugget of the idea there and then re-create the Fury out of whole cloth. I combined it with the mythical Phoenix, which rises from the ashes, and discovered a creature I really found intriguing. Like I said above, the fun is in turning the puzzle pieces around and seeing how they might fit.

Do you have any advice for aspiring authors?

As a former editor and present author, I have TOO MUCH advice! The two most important things I would say are: do not give up and remember that rejection of your work/suggestions for ways to improve it are just part of the process. Every step leads forward.

Is there anything else you would like to tell us about yourself?
I believe in talent, but more than that, I believe in hard work. In ten years, I hope to be a much better writer than I am now. That’s the other thing that inspires me—the belief that I can be better.

MALINDA LO

Interview with Malinda Lo

Malinda Lo’s first novel, ASH, a retelling of Cinderella with a lesbian twist, was a finalist for the William C. Morris YA Debut Award, the Andre Norton Award for YA Fantasy and Science Fiction, and the Lambda Literary Award. Her second novel, HUNTRESS, a companion novel to ASH, is an ALA Best Book for Young Adults. Her young adult science fiction duology, beginning with ADAPTATION, will be published in fall 2012. She lives in Northern California with her partner and their dog.

What are you reading right now?

Currently I'm listening to the audiobook of THE PRIVILEGE OF THE SWORD by Ellen Kushner. It's set in a European-based fantasy world and is about a 15-year-old country girl who is invited by her uncle, a wealthy and notorious duke, to come live with him in the city. The condition is that she train in how to be a swordsman. The girl doesn't really have much choice in the matter, and the way she deals with her lot — as well as her swordsmanship lessons — are fascinating, and I'm completely addicted to listening to it. (I should note that this is not a YA novel.)

What first sparked your interest in writing?

I was born being interested in writing. So: genetics?
 
What do you love the most about writing? The least?

This has changed or evolved over the years, but right now, after having written two novels about the same cast of characters (ADAPTATION is the first of two books, and I just completed the second draft of the sequel), I think my favorite part of writing is spending time with my characters. I've thought about them so much that they feel totally real to me. I know that I'm going to miss them a lot when I'm finished writing these books.

My least favorite part of writing is transition scenes. I hate these, I really do! I wish people would just get from point A to point B without me having to deal with it, but unfortunately, in fiction as in life, you have to suffer through the commute.

What inspires you?

Almost anything can inspire me. Food, nature, music, fashion, history, art, love, fear, mortality. I think that writers must be able to find inspiration in as much as possible. What's the opposite of inspired? Jaded? Those who are jaded or cynical cannot truly be creative, because they deny possibility.

That said, any creative project — novel or other art form — does not come solely from inspiration. It comes from putting in the time and going to work, even when inspiration does not seem remotely likely to strike.

Why fantasy?

Magic.

Why young adult?

I did not set out to write young adult fiction. ASH was written for adults, or so I thought, but when it came time to send it out to agents, I realized it fit better in the YA market. Since then I've been writing YA because that's where I was launched, and I really enjoy plenty of YA fiction. I like its immediacy and its focus on story. That doesn't mean I'll only ever write YA, but I do think it's a wonderful category right now.

How was ASH born?

ASH resulted from my desire to write the book I'd always wanted to read. My favorite novels growing up were written by Robin McKinley, who has retold many fairy tales. My favorite fairy tale was "Cinderella." Robin McKinley didn't retell that story, so I decided to do it myself.

How was ADAPTATION born?

ADAPTATION came from a dream I had. In the dream, two teens were trapped in an airport while planes began crashing. It was incredibly vivid, and when I woke up I ran to my office and wrote it down in my writing journal. I thought immediately that it would make a great story, and I kept thinking about it long after I'd had the dream. That's how I knew I wanted to write a book that started with what I saw in that dream.

Your two worlds are very different. Was one harder to write than the other? One more fun?

It was a little difficult for me to get the hang of the style of ADAPTATION at first because I was so used to writing in that old-tymey fairy tale voice. However, I think at the beginning of every novel I grapple with how the book should feel, so this wasn't really that different. Once I figured out the book's voice, I found it wonderfully fun and liberating. I got to use all sorts of words that I couldn't in ASH or HUNTRESS— scientific jargon and contemporary curse words and slang. I really enjoyed it.

Do you have any advice for aspiring authors?

Read a lot. Read what you love. If you don't love something, give it another couple of chapters before you give up on it. Sometimes books take a little bit of time to ease into. And try to read with an open mind; try not to judge it before you've digested it.

Similarly, write a lot. You will need to write a lot of crap before you write anything good. Keep writing, even if you think it's bad — and especially if you think it's good, because it probably isn't. Not at first. I've never written a first draft that rocked on all levels. You always need to step back, give yourself time to digest it (just like with reading) and come back to look at it as dispassionately as possible.

And don't rush. Everything now is go-go-go, but I think speed can be the worst thing to happen to writing. Slow down so you can see the words better.