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.
Today’s guest for the WHAT is Sara Bennett Wealer, author of Grave Things Like Love which releases today
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?
The idea for Grave Things Like Love came to me years ago, while I was working my very first job out of college. I was the transportation reporter for the North Hills News-Record in Pittsburgh, PA, and I HATED it. I yearned to write features, not file stories about gas prices and road construction. One of the small communities I covered had a big yellow Victorian house with a funeral home in it. I’m not sure how I first learned about them—perhaps it was through covering a death that occurred while I was working on a weekend. But I was fascinated by how the family lived upstairs and ran the business below.
I wish I could remember the name of the funeral home. I can still see it so clearly in my head. I also clearly remember them allowing me to spend a few hours there, touring the place and talking with them about the business. I’d planned to write a feature story, but ended up getting a different job and moving to Missouri. I always remembered, though, how interesting I thought it would be to grow up in that setting. It seemed like the perfect young adult novel.
Once the original concept existed, how did you build a plot around it?
That was the hard part! My first draft, which took a long time to write since I was dealing with the deaths of both of my parents (how appropriate!) and revising my first Delacorte book, Now & When, wasn’t really a romance, it didn’t have a ghost angle, and I killed off one of the main characters (who got resurrected as a love interest when I decided to go in a new direction).
Elaine, my main character, originally was embarrassed by her family’s business and a major loner. The story wasn’t much fun, so I decided to lean in a little more to the things that people are curious about when dealing with death. I allowed myself to fold in a ghost story, which was inspired by the idea that Elaine could have a love interest who wanted to be a ghost hunter. I allowed Elaine to be more of a regular teen, who might be frustrated sometimes with peoples’ misconceptions of her family business, but who finds the whole thing sort of mundane—until she starts discovering voices from the past. From there, the plot came together much more naturally.
Have you ever had the plot firmly in place, only to find it changing as the story moved from your mind to paper?
Not really. I feel like things always evolve as I write them. Often the story I think I want to tell ends up being something totally different by the time I’ve shared it with critique partners and editors and let it marinate. I’m a big reviser!!
Do story ideas come to you often, or is fresh material hard to come by?
I usually don’t have a shortage of ideas, but many of them I don’t feel confident in my ability to pull off. Ideas for the longest time came from elements in my life—relationships I remember or something one of my kids did. Those are always just a starting kernel, though. None of my books is truly based on real life.
Lately, I’ve been more intrigued by ideas than real events. I’ve got one whopper of a story I want to try and tell, and I’m terrified I won’t be able to make it work. For that reason, I’m starting to think I really need to try.
How do you choose which story to write next, if you’ve got more than one percolating?
I honestly go with whichever one feels the easiest. Sometimes I’ll have the main character’s voice already, or an idea of a few major events. In that case, I’ll get started and see where it takes me. Sometimes I’ll go with whichever idea feels like the most fun. I have to enjoy what I’m writing, otherwise I won’t be able to power through the inevitable slog phase, when everything feels hard.
I have 6 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?
I have a ton of pets and I love every single one of them! My poodle mix Ruby will curl up with me if I’m writing in bed or on the couch. If I’m in my study, my Shepherd mix Foster is in his bed a few feet away. I find their presence comforting, and getting up to feed them or let them outside can be a great way to clear my head when I need it. Cats can be distracting, as I’m sure you know, when they decide they want to lie right on your keyboard or nuzzle your face when you’re trying to edit. But when my grey tiger Muffin decides to curl up in my lap, I feel truly lucky. Those are always good writing session!
Sara Bennett Wealer grew up in Manhattan, Kansas (the “Little Apple”), where she sang with the choir and wrote for her high school newspaper. She majored in vocal performance at the University of Kansas before deciding she had no business trying to make a career as an opera singer. She transferred to journalism school, where nobody cares if you can hit a high C or convincingly portray a Valkyrie. Since then, Sara has been fortunate to make her living as a writer. She started as a beat reporter, then went on to work in public relations and advertising—even theme park design. Sara lives in Cincinnati with her husband and daughters, and she still sings when her schedule allows—most recently with the May Festival Chorus, the official choir of the Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra.