Inspiration is a funny thing. It can come to us like a lightning bolt, through the lyrics of a song, or in the fog of a dream. Ask any writer where their stories come from and you’ll get a myriad of answers, and in that vein I created the WHAT (What the Hell Are you Thinking?) interview. Always including in the WHAT is one random question to really dig down into the interviewees mind, and probably supply some illumination into my own as well.

Today’s guest for the WHAT is Elaine Vickers, author of Fadeaway. Elaine is an award-winning author of picture books, middle grade, and young adult novels that aim to help readers of all ages find connection and belonging. .

Ideas for our books can come from just about anywhere, and sometimes even we can’t pinpoint exactly how or why. Did you have a specific origin point for your book?

This book began with a character—and I think this is the first time that’s been true. Just a kid missing his older brother, Jake. Where was he? What happened to him? He didn’t know, and neither did I. Over the next few months, we figured it out together.

 Once the original concept existed, how did you build a plot around it?

Not long after that initial character appeared, I attended a youth night with my son and listened to a speaker tell his own powerful story of addiction and struggle and love and redemption. It was like a lightning bolt; although none of the details were the same, the man at the mic had just articulated the core of the story I needed to write. He had helped answer both essential questions of where Jake had gone, and why. But I knew it wasn’t going to be a linear story from a single perspective, because that’s not how addiction works, or how life works, for that matter. From there, I knew that in order to tell this story the way I wanted to, I needed to give voice to all the people who loved Jake—and even a few who didn’t.

Have you ever had the plot firmly in place, only to find it changing as the story moved from your mind to paper?

I often know where a story ends and a few guideposts along the way, but the actual journey never ceases to surprise me. For Fadeaway, one of the biggest surprises was how many lives were impacted in really huge ways by Jake’s disappearance. (I ended up with POV characters ages 11-85!) But of course that’s how it would work. Our lives are more interconnected than we realize.

And I honestly never intended to write a YA. Fadeaway started out as a middle grade novel in verse—which I also never intended to write. Nothing I’ve ever written has surprised me as much as this book—at every turn, and in every possible way. But eventually, it became what it needed to be, I think.

How do you choose which story to write next, if you’ve got more than one percolating?

I have a note in my phone called Seed Packet where I jot new ideas. At last count, there were about a hundred ideas in there for everything from picture books to plays to novels. Very few of them are actually viable to grow into anything good. Ha! But it’s strange (or maybe not strange at all) how a story seed can seem totally unviable one day and brimming with possibility another. So I go through life, gathering all the tiny seeds of ideas, then open the packet when I’m ready to play around with something and try planting it. Whichever is speaking to me, whichever one I just can’t wait to play around with, that’s the one I pull out.

I have 5 cats and a Dalmatian (seriously, check my Instagram feed) and I usually have at least one or two snuggling with me when I write. Do you have a writing buddy, or do you find it distracting?

Ha! That is truly an impressive number of cats!

For me, writing is largely a solitary endeavor, but sometimes I do love to gather with friends for a writing retreat. (Well, when there isn’t a global pandemic. J) There’s something energizing about the crackle of keyboards and the hum of ideas that happens when you’re all working together. (And the social pressure to keep writing while your friends are being productive doesn’t hurt either.)