As part of our ongoing series of interviews today I am featuring author Alan Gratz. His book Samurai Shortstop hit the shelves last year with great success and he has recently launched his latest YA, Something Rotten. This book is a new twist on Shakespeare's Hamlet set in modern times in a small town. "A stinking-rich family. A reeking paperplant. A murder most foul. Something isdefinitely rotten in Denmark, Tennessee,and only 17-year-old detective Horatio Wilkes can sniff out the killer."Sounds intriguing! Let's ask Alan some questions, shall we?
KL - I attended your appearance at the View From Tuesday Evening at Quail Ridge Books and Music in Raleigh and I found your manner to be engaging and your topics very thought provoking.
AG - Thanks! Once you've taught middle schoolers, there's no crowd you can't handle. :-)
KL - You hate doing research but have been forced to come to terms with it and embrace it because of the subject matter and settings of the books you've been writing. Can you explain what writing life was like before you embraced research and how knuckling down and doing it has changed your writing?
AG - Before I embraced research, I simply picked projects that didn't “require” any research. I was too lazy. Or, perhaps better put, I lacked discipline. That's not to say that only writers of historical fiction are disciplined. Once I learned to be a more disciplined writer, I looked back at “all” the writing I'd been doing, historical and otherwise, and realized I could be applying more disciplined techniques to everything I'd been writing. There was a “reason” Samurai Shortstop was the third book I'd written and yet the first one I'd sold. I was a much better writer then. I'd learned so much. But before Samurai, I couldn't imagine putting in the time and effort that a research project like that would require. Those days were filled with a lot of writers block, a lot of banging my head on the keyboard waiting for the muse to strike. I have a much better handle on those things now.
KL - How do you go about gathering your research and then how do you keep it organized?
AG - I outline everything I do now, historical or otherwise. That helps me keep my story straight, and allows me to deliberately develop themes and repeat symbols and metaphors. When doing a lot of historical research, I spend a few months taking notes, then another month or so outlining my story, and then I move all my research notes, line by line, into my outline. Do I have a chapter set in a Shinto shrine? I move all my notes about Shinto shrines to that outline page. Do I have a scene where a doctor explains dioxin poisoning? I move all my notes about dioxin and its effects to that page of my outline. Now, instead of sitting down to write the first page of a 250 page novel, I turn to the first page of my outline and begin writing the first page of a “seven” page chapter. Now I'm not sifting through an inch of research notes looking for that one detail I need, I'm running down a list that's one, two, maybe three pages at most. And I know all the info I'll need is somewhere in those pages. That's essentially how I conquered my writer's block--by making sure I was always “prepared” to write when I sat down to actually write words and sentences and paragraphs on the page.
KL - You are working on several books at once - how to you manage that?
AG - This is getting more difficult. I've been very fortunate to sell a handful of books on pitches, but now I have to get them all written! At this very moment, I'm on deadline for two books that have to be wrapped up about the same time, by the end of this calendar year. Both books are written and in the revision stage, so while one is back with my editor, I'm working away at the other one. Very soon I'm going to have to “begin” two novels that are both due by the end of next summer. Neither is written or outlined. One of those novels requires a great deal of research, so I'll be splitting my days. Part of my day will be spent reading research books for one novel, and then the second part of the day will be spent outlining and writing the other. I can't “write” two books at the same time--that's just too much for me. But I can research and brainstorm one while writing another. It's actually a nice change of pace during the day. I often get burned out on the writing after seven to ten pages or so, so it's a great way to stay in my office and keep working.
KL - You wore many different writing hats before you became the successful novelist you are now. What things did you do? Were any of your past experiences helpful in forming the writer you are today?
AG - Oh, I did a lot of things to pay the bills, many if not all of which involved writing or literature in some fashion or another. I wrote newsletter copy, created press releases, sold books, wrote radio commercials, taught English to middle school, high school, and university students, and even did some freelance television writing. The number one thing I learned from all the writing work I did was to take editorial criticism. Every person who handled my work wanted me to change it somehow, and I had to learn to put my ego away and make whatever changes were required of me. That attitude became so ingrained that revisions don't drive me crazy. Oh, I still “hate” to do them, and I die a little inside with every editorial letter I get, but I had a lot of practice rewriting, and rewriting, and rewriting “again” on my freelance work, so I just accept this as part of the process now. It was through my freelance work that I learned much of the discipline I would need to write and sell my first novel.
KL - You did 30 school visits last year! What do you typically offer the students when you do a school visit?
AG - I talk about my path to publication, focusing primarily on the research, outlining, and revising phases of my writing. My goal is to pull back the curtain and show kids the reality of a writing life. I knew I wanted to be a writer when I was in middle school, and while I had a great many supportive teachers who taught me how to write, none of them taught me how to make a “living” as a writer. I hope I get through to the two or three aspiring writers in the audience, and at the same time I hope the rest of the students begin to understand the time and energy that go into the books that fill their library shelves.
KL - My twelve year old son attended Alan's talk with me and looked like he was bored out of his mind. But in working on a writing project recently he said "that Writer Guy said if something doesn't appear in the story twice then it needs to get cut". So, Writer Guy - did he get that right? Can you explain that a little further (and bless you for making an impression on my kid).
AG - He was bored? Oh dear. In my defense, it “was” a teacher and librarian program! (MOTHER'S NOTE - I said he acted bored - this is what he does and doesn't necessarily reflect what is actually going on inside his head) But it sounds like he did take something away after all. What he's talking about is some advice I heard the Newbery Award-winning author Linda Sue Park give about how she decides what does and doesn't go into her historical novels. She said that if she couldn't use an element twice in a story she wouldn't use it at all. The example she gave was that in ancient Korea people ate and drank out of hollowed out gourds, and she kept trying to work that detail into her books but she could never make it significant enough to the story to return to it a second time. It took her three books to finally work in that tidbit. The rule works best for historical fiction because it keeps you from throwing in every last bit of research you did, but it's also a great exercise in making everything you put into your stories relevant later on. As long as he understands how to use it, yeah, it's a great piece of advice!
Thanks a bunch Alan!
Read more about Alan on these blogs:
Elizabeth Dulemba
Kim Norman
Kerry Madden
