Helen Douglas On Inspiration From A Photo

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 Helen Douglas, author of the young adult time-travel romance novel AFTER EDEN (Bloomsbury USA Childrens, July 2013) and the upcoming sequel CHASING STARS  (Bloomsbury USA Childrens July 19, 2016).

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?

Very much so. I came across a photograph from Vanity Fair that imagined what New York City would look like if sea levels were to rise as a result of global warming. It was a frightening, but beautiful illustration. I started researching the likely effects of global warming on communities around the world – not just the effect of rising sea levels on our coastlines and cities and islands, but also on our food production and landscape. And then I began imagining what it would be like to live in a world so recently changed. Because Chasing Stars is the second part of a time travel duology, it had to take place in the future. It was fun – and alarming – to set it just a hundred years in the future, using some of these projections. Then I asked myself how my main character, Eden, would cope if she suddenly found herself living in this world where once powerful nations were struggling to feed their people, and other countries had risen up as world leaders. How would she cope in a world where cereal crops were impossible to grow and insects formed a large part of our diet? 

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

Once I’d decided the story would take place in the future, and that there would be a scene set in New York, I plotted backwards and forwards from that. In After Eden, Eden and Ryan had broken the laws of time travel in order to be together. I knew there had to be consequences. And so, at the beginning of Chasing Stars, a ‘cleaner’ is sent back to ‘clean up’ any trace of Ryan’s presence in the past, and to transport him back to his own time for a trial. As Eden knows about time travel and bits and pieces about the future, she has to go to, to prevent any contamination of the past. The story built from there.

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

I don’t like to outline in too much detail, because for me, the ‘fun’ part of writing is the discovering of the story. If I’ve already worked out in detail what is going to happen every step of the way, the writing itself feels like a chore. So, I have an end point and a journey in mind, but usually find myself taking unexpected detours along the way. With After Eden, however, the book I submitted to my agent had a very different ending to the one that was eventually published. Without giving too much away, the original ending was quite bleak.

Do story ideas come to you often, or is fresh material hard to come by?

I have more ideas than I have time to write. They’re not fully fleshed stories, but bare bones of ideas just waiting to be assembled into an interesting shape and given substance. 

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

Generally one of them is yelling just a little bit louder to be heard. That’s the one I’ll go with – the one that makes me most excited. Other times I’ll pass on a story idea for the time being, because I know it will require lots of research and I don’t have the time to do the research at the moment.

When it comes to naming characters, I just rest my hands and let them tell me what their names are. What’s your process? 

It depends. Some of the names of characters in the After Eden series are quite significant. Eden, for instance, is the name not just of the main character, but also of a new world – I wanted to draw on the symbolism of an unspoilt paradise. And because many of the characters in the series live at a time when space exploration is happening, they are names after famous constellations or stars. Many of the minor characters are named after friends. Sometimes I really struggle to fit a name to a character though and have to go through several name changes before it feels right.

Thursday Thoughts

Thoughts lately...

1) We use the term cradle robber for someone dating a person much younger than them, and gold digger for someone (usually) dating someone much older than them, but grave robber for someone who digs up dead people looking for jewelry. Wouldn't it make more sense to switch the last two?

2) Ever notice that all the people in the ads for depression medication and / or counseling are really good looking? That doesn't help, people.

3) The people in the STD med ads are also really attractive. Where are all the wince-inducing pics from high school health class?

MarcyKate Connolly On Switching Gears In Between Projects

The second novel is no easy feat, and with that in mind I put together a series of questions for debuts who are tackling the next obstacle in their career path. I call it the SNOB - Second Novel Omnipresent Blues. Whether you’re under contract or trying to snag another deal, you’re a professional now, with the pressures of a published novelist compounded with the still-present nagging self-doubt of the noobie. How to deal?

Today's guest for the SNOB is MarcyKate Connolly, author of the MG titles MONSTROUS and RAVENOUS, available from HarperChildrens. MarcyKate has written poetry as long as she can remember, and began her first full-length novel in 2008. Since then she's completed many other novels including MONSTROUS (Upper MG Fantasy, Frankenstein meets the Brothers Grimm) and have several others languishing in various states of incompletion and disarray.

Is it hard to leave behind the first novel and focus on the second?

It definitely can be. You spend so much time writing, revising, and planning for the launch of book #1, that when it’s finally accepted as “done” switching gears can be tricky. However, in my case I think the fact that my second book was a companion novel set in the same world and involving some of the same characters made that transition easier than it might have been if both books were completely unrelated standalones.

At what point do you start diverting your energies from promoting your debut and writing / polishing / editing your second?

You don’t (or at least, I didn’t) and that’s what makes it tricky. Once the editing on that first book is complete, you need to start writing the second. And at the same time, you also need to plan and begin to carry out promotion for the first book. Unless your books are slated to be published more than a year apart, chances are you’ll be doing those things concurrently. It can be hard to balance, but it certainly keeps you busy :) I found using a project management tool to be very helpful in keeping me on track with all the tasks I had for both writing/editing and promotion.

Your first book landed an agent and an editor, and hopefully some fans. Who are you writing the second one for? Them, or yourself?

All of the above! Which is pretty weird (also awesome). When you’re writing the first book the only real expectations are coming from yourself. But now that the book is out there, your agent and editor have professional expectations of you, and your fans have expectations for the next book too. It’s both wonderful and stressful.

It can be hard to do, but the best advice I’d have is to try to tune all that out as best you can. I would have psyched myself out if I’d been focused on writing for someone else. For me, the key was to keep writing the book I wanted to write. If I hadn’t loved the book and the characters and their journey, it would have been a lot more difficult. Also, having a great team of people to work with at HarperCollins certainly helped a ton!

Is there a new balance of time management to address once you’re a professional author?

Definitely! I thoroughly underestimated the amount of time I would end up spending on emails, let alone everything else. Again, investing in a good To Do list app or project management tool is what really helped me. (If you’re looking for a recommendation, I use the free version of Zoho Projects – it also has an iPhone app).

It takes some trial and error to determine how much you can reasonably take on, and I definitely took on more than I probably should have with the first book, but that gave me a more realistic idea of what I could accomplish the second time around. Basically, don’t beat yourself up if you don’t get it right on the first book. Just do the best you can.

What did you do differently the second time around, with the perspective of a published author?

With editing I had a much better idea of what to expect and of what red flags my editors would be looking out for when I was writing my second book. That meant my first edit letter on Ravenous was only 8 pages instead of the 20 page edit letter I got for Monstrous. I learned from the initial experience (thankfully!) and grew as a writer.

When it came time to promote, I made a more realistic plan for myself. I adore blogs and bloggers, but I found that outreach directly to librarians, teachers, and booksellers was more effective for my particular books, so I added in more of that and fewer guest posts. I cut a couple other things I did for Monstrous that saw no returns (press releases, for example) and expanded some of the things that were effective (for example, personalized packets to local librarians). Really, the key for me is to be flexible and chalk up things that don’t work as well as you’d hoped as learning experiences. :)