Interview with Author Sara Zarr
Here's my first interview of 2007! Sara Zarr's debut novel Story of a Girl is outstanding. It's in stores now so don't miss it! Enjoy!
STORY OF A GIRL is your first novel. Can you tell us a little about your journey to publication?
It was long and arduous. As is the case with most writers, my first sold book was not really my “first novel.” I'd written a YA novel in 1995 and found an agent. The book came close to selling a couple of times, but not close enough. I wrote another novel in the meantime, one that I never showed to my agent (or anyone), then another. That third book led to my agent and me parting ways. Around that same time, I got laid off from my day job. In 2002 I had no agent, no job, and no prospects. It was a discouraging time; I almost gave it all up. When I started writing the book that would become Story of a Girl, I felt a strange sense of destiny about the book and through all the drafts and rejections I refused to give it up. In early 2005, I signed with my wonderful agent Michael Bourret, and we sold the book pretty quickly to Jennifer Hunt at Little, Brown.
Deanna Lambert is full of longing and regret. I can't stop thinking about her. How did she and her story come to you?
Story of a Girl was born entirely out of my interest in Deanna, who was this side character in the third book I'd written. When I finished that book and was casting about for what to work on next, I decided I wanted to write about her. I remember sitting on my couch at home and writing the first pages, imagining Deanna watching the Nova special “The Miracle of Life” in her high school health class. (In fact, looking back at my old computer files, it looks like early drafts of the book were called “The Miracle of Life”.) That scene was cut a long time ago, but imagining her thoughts about the film was the beginning of learning her voice. I knew she had an older brother whose girlfriend was pregnant. I knew she came from a working class family. I knew her relationship with her father was strained. And I just went from there.
Your characters and the writing are full, well-rounded — just incredible. What can you share about your process for writing this particular story?
Thank you. I had the good fortune to be in a great critique group while I was writing this book, at a time when I was ripe to learn. Everyone in the group was far more accomplished than me; I soaked up their wisdom like a sponge. None of them were very familiar with YA and in a strange way I felt compelled to prove that YA fiction could be as “literary” and valuable as anything they were doing, so I worked hard to impress them. Also, being in the group helped me learn how to self edit, because eventually I could anticipate their questions and concerns and complaints and address them before I even handed in the next chapter. They never let me settle for easy ways out or implausible plot turns or weak characterization.
Revision is an important component of writing. How did your story change over the course of revisions?
In some ways the first draft is barely recognizable as the same book! In other ways, it was all there from the beginning and just needed a lot of excavation and refining. The central conflict between Deanna and her father was a little vague in the beginning—it was more about him being depressed (and suffering from Gulf War Syndrome in early, early drafts) and emotionally absent than about anything specific. Once I had a specific incident to anchor the family turmoil, it got much easier to build the story around that in a believable way. I wish I could answer this question in some brilliant way that would help me now as I'm revising my second book for Little, Brown—a lot of it boils down to the same things: having a strong central conflict, being with your characters long enough to really know them, whittling away anything unnecessary. In the end, there's no magic key to revising other than working at it and working at it until it gets closer and closer to that shimmering vision that first strikes you when you get an idea for a story. In truth, it's all sort of a mystery.
What was it like working with an editor?
I'm sure I'm not alone in saying that it's simultaneously one of the best and most terrifying parts of the writing process. It's such a huge relief to have someone other than yourself who understands your vision and takes your hand and leads you closer to it—or shoves you from behind… whatever it takes! At the same time, the editor's necessarily singular focus on making the best book possible can sometimes play tricks on your ego and whatever ideas you have of yourself as a writer. You can convince yourself you've really got it goin' on and this writing thing is easy, money in the bank, and what could possibly be wrong with your book other than a few minor issues you can fix in an evening while watching The Gilmore Girls? The truth is, a good editor can see the potential in a book even when it's still somewhat crappy, so there comes a time you have to get over yourself and admit that even though you rewrote the thing ten times before you sold it, it needs a couple more rounds before to be all it can be. That said, the editorial process of Story of a Girl was relatively painless. Jennifer's enthusiasm and editorial wisdom coupled with my eagerness (after all, I'd waited ten years for the chance to work with an editor) made it feel doable. At least that's how I remember it now. Maybe it's like childbirth—when you see your beautiful baby, you forget the pain. At the time of this writing, I just got my editorial notes for my second book, and there were moments reading them that I thought, “Why does Jennifer hate me? Why is she trying to ruin my life?” So it doesn't get easier; it's always a challenge. My inner lazy child really wanted to hear, “It's fabulous—ready to go to press!” But one of the editor's jobs is to not let you be the lazy child, and Jennifer can see the vision through the fog of the current draft, and won't let me settle for something that doesn't honor that vision. For that, I'm lucky to have her. To keep with the childbirth analogy, you could say an editor is like a midwife. She can't do the birthing for you, but she can prep you for it, talk you through it, yell at you to calm down when that's what you need, say things like “Not yet” and “Push!”, and bring all her wisdom and experience to the birthing room. Sometimes the labor is short and easy. Sometimes…not. Every baby is different. You could look at two beautiful newborns and have no idea which one popped out in two hours, and which put its mom through 36 hours of hell. I know I'm really pushing this metaphor. I wouldn't mind an epidural right about now…
You are also a teacher of writing — I was fortunate to have been your student. Can you share with us a little about what makes good writing? Any advice for new writers?
I don't know if good writing can be taught. When I teach, I just hope to give any given student what he or she is looking for in that moment. Some students are at a stage where what they need is encouragement, especially if there's no one in their life who has any faith or interest in their writing and they've taken a big risk just to put something on paper. Some students are ready and looking to be pushed. Others think they know everything and just want a pat on the back. Those are the hardest to know what to do with! In terms of what makes good writing, there's probably no definitive answer to that. With fiction, I guess I would agree with John Gardner and others who have said that the author must create a kind of sustained dream. As a reader, you don't want anything to remind you that it's just a dream, that this world isn't real. You don't want to see the author pulling the strings behind the story. What that means for the writer is that you have to be in the dream, too. If it's not real to you, you won't be able to make it real to others. My advice for new writers would be to work at overcoming any fear or tendency to perfectionism that might stand in your way. Perfectionism is useful later when you're revising something, but it's deadly when you're starting out. You'll write the same paragraph over and over and never get a story out. Undoubtedly there are voices in your head telling you that you can't do it, you're a fraud, a hack, and why don't you just do everyone a favor and get back to the stack of dirty dishes already? Fear will always be with you as a writer in some form or another—I don't believe it's ever really conquered. Writers who finish stories or novels and face them again and again in revisions have figured out some way to live with the fear or temporarily tame it when they need to work. It's never too early to start figuring out how big a role you'll let fear have. I highly recommend Ralph Keyes' wonderful book The Courage to Write. It's a great companion for writers at every stage of the journey. Among the many comforting insights Keyes offers is that one of the things separating would-be writers from working writers is that working writers know the impossibility of perfectly capturing a creative vision, that the book on paper will never match the one in their head, but they write anyway. I think that's true; if you're ever going to get past the beginning stages, you have to learn to live with what really amounts to a constant state of failure in some degree.
When you started out with your writing career, did you attend writing conferences? Do you recommend them to other writers?
I went to a few. Their usefulness sort of depends what you're looking for. Sometimes you just need a reminder that you're not alone and you need to meet people like yourself. Other times, you have a lot of questions about the business of publishing. Eventually you'll be looking for an outside opinion of your writing. Writers who are considering going to a conference should think about what they need at this particular phase of their journey and look for a conference that will meet those needs. If what you need is creative inspiration, listening for hours to people talking about how they got an agent isn't going to fit the bill. Before you lay out the money, ask other writers for their conference recommendations and horror stories, read the conference program carefully, etc. Don't feel pressured to go to a particular conference just because everyone you know is going and you don't want to miss a party.
What's the story of Sara Zarr? Tell us a few choice tidbits about you, the person.
My family experience definitely helped shaped me into a writer. Both my parents really instilled a genuine appreciation for reading, music, art, movies. My dad used to wake me up in the middle of the night if there was a movie on TV that he thought I should see. Of course, part of that was because he was an alcoholic with questionable parenting techniques, but I think I inherited some of his passion through both nature and nurture. My mom read to my sister and me every night and played guitar and sang us to sleep. Also, it was not unusual to come home and find her practicing the cello, going over the same difficult sections of a piece over and over. Her father was a journalist, and one of my aunts has been writing children's stories all her life. I told her once that if she hadn't had so much to do with raising four children and working and helping to run the farm (in North Carolina), she probably would have been published. She replied that if she hadn't had all those things, she wouldn't have had anything to write about. That was sort of an ah-ha moment, that all these things in our lives that challenge us and stretch us and sometimes overwhelm us, the things we sometimes wish weren't with us, are where the stories come from. My aunt's joke that they knew one day the family would produce a novelist—it was simply a matter of time.
If you could go back in time and give advice to your younger self, what age would your younger self be, and what would you tell yourself?
I'd probably be thirteen, which as we know can feel like the worst year of your life, and I'd tell myself the big secret of adolescence, which is of course that it's hard for everyone. That everyone felt something similar to what I felt, that even the people who seemed to be having an easy time of it were struggling, that all the kids I wanted to emulate or wanted to like me faced the same or similar insecurities. Maybe then I could have relaxed a little bit and enjoyed the ride more. On the other hand, maybe we're not meant to enjoy the ride.
What's the best thing about being a writer?
I've been writing full-time for almost a year now, and the best thing about it is being able to make a living (or half a living) doing what I love. My husband is a high school teacher, and he's very passionate about it and is energized and fulfilled by it, even when he's exhausted from giving himself completely to it. In the years I was struggling to write and sell books, I really envied him because nothing I did to make money felt like that for me. It just felt like something that was in the way of what I really wanted to be doing. During the times when I was ready to give up, I would pray that if I wasn't going to make it as a writer could God at least let me know about something else I could care about that much? If my destiny was to be an administrative assistant, so be it. I just wanted something. Also, the self-employed lifestyle generally suits me. I like time alone, I enjoy my company, I'm comfortable being self-dependent and self-directed. It makes the control freak in me happy. And of course, with publishing a book comes the joy of finally getting to share that passion with other people and hopefully give them that experience of connection and understanding that readers look for.
What's the most challenging thing about being a writer?
Well, there are virtually limitless opportunities for feeling inadequate, insecure, and inconsequential. As I mentioned, what comes out on paper never is quite what you dreamed it to be. You can get close, and ideally as you grow and improve you get closer and closer, but again, in some ways you are constantly living with a degree of failure. It might be failure in the writing itself, or failure to find an audience, failure to impress your friends or family, failure to sell as many copies as you and your publisher had hoped, failure to get good reviews (or, for some writers, any reviews), failure to sell a movie option, failure to win award… the list goes on and on. You have to figure out how to live with that. If you can't, you'll just go crazy and get blocked and fall into despair. Times like that, you start to think maybe you should go to one of those trade schools advertised during daytime TV.
Look around your office/writing space, what do you see? On your desk? On your walls?
My desk doesn't look like the desk of a creative genius. It looks like the desk of an administrative assistant. I've got my laptop, computer speakers, printer, pencil jar, Post-It dispenser, upright file, stapler, and stacks of paper. Very unglamorous. My bulletin board has some favorite poems, Post-Its with various quotes I may or may not use, a printout of my final book cover, a photo of my agent (smiling benevolently, encouraging me to get something done), a couple of snapshots of me around age seven or eight, a Jesuit prayer. I've also got a framed picture of part of a stained glass window at an old church in my neighborhood—it's Jesus carrying a little lamb in his arms. It's something I like to look at when I'm feeling small and helpless in the face of the task before me. It reminds me I'm not alone.
What's the best advice you've ever been given and by whom?
Assuming you're talking about writing advice and not basic stuff like “always backup your computer,” my favorite advice is from Flannery O'Connor. I'm a follower of the Christian faith, and there's a certain contingent of people within my faith community who would say that I'm obligated to write “Christian” stories—stories that uplift or teach a moral or are evangelical in nature, acting as a sort of altar-call on paper. O'Connor addresses that by saying: “Your beliefs will be the light by which you see, but they will not be what you see and they will not be a substitute for seeing.”
What are you working on now? What can fans expect next?
As you know, it's always hard to describe what you're working on, especially when you're still in the midst of the process. Basically: It's about a senior in high school who is unexpectedly reunited with her childhood sweetheart, and the way that upsets the balance of her universe to an extreme and possibly dangerous degree. It's about the undeniable power of shared experience, and the way it sometimes ties you or even obligates you to people you might otherwise have (and maybe should have) separated yourself from. It should be coming out from Little, Brown around mid-2008.
Do you do school visits? How can teachers and fans contact you?
I am definitely up for school visits, library visits, book store visits, movie studio tours, international travel, and anything else people might want to offer me. For information on school and library visits, people can contact Lisa McClatchy at LisKe@aol.com. Everyone else can stop by my web site—www.sarazarr.com. I blog regularly, and there's also a place you can sign up for my newsletter, as well as info on contacting me by email.
Interview © Copyright January, 2007 by Debbi Michiko Florence.
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