Book Talk

Book Talk provides authors’ perspectives on libraries, books,technology, and information. If you have any suggestions of authors you would like to see featured in Book Talk, or if you are interested in volunteering to be an author-interviewer, contact Kathleen Hughes,Editor of Public Libraries, at the Public Library Association, 50 E. Huron St., Chicago, IL 60611; khughes@ala.org.

A Good Book is a Good Book is a Good Book: A Conversation with Gayle Forman

Gayle Forman began her writing career as a journalist focusing on teenage social issues. With the publication of her immensely popular If I Stay and its equally well-regarded follow-up, Where I Went, she cemented her reputation as one of the most innovative YA authors working today. She spoke to Public Libraries via e-mail February 1st. She will be speaking at the "Young at Heart: YA Books With Adult Crossover Appeal" panel at the PLA 2012 Conference, March 15th, 8:15 - 9:30 AM in Room 120 A-B-C at the Pennsylvania Convention Center.

Public Libraries: How has your background as a journalist affected how you write fiction?

Gayle Forman: Being a journalist has informed my fiction in many ways, both obvious and subtle. Let's start with obvious. My first novel, Sisters in Sanity, is based on a story I'd written (ten years before) for Seventeen Magazine about behavior modification bootcamps and the kids who got sent to these Draconian places. It was one of those articles that stuck with me and when I first decided to try fiction, it swept back to the front of my brain and provided the backbone for a fictional tale. I have another idea brewing that is also inspired by a story I did years ago, if not in quite the same linear way that Sisters was, but still, there's a line. The years as a journalist also informs my work  in other ways, from my rather disciplined schedule: I get to work as soon as I get the kids out the door for school, a habit drilled into me from all those years working as a freelance journalist. I'm also completely freaked out about authenticity and accuracy in books and I fact-check a lot of my fiction. Even little details, like whether a flight would go from A to B at a certain time, I have to check those out and make sure that they jibe with what's happening in my fictional work. It doesn't sit right otherwise. And for big stuff—the medical, the musical, Shakespeare—I research.

PL: Have you ever found material that you researched for a story bleeding into your fiction work?

GF: Not bleeding so much as hemorrhaging. See above answer about stories informing books. Also, I have this weird compulsion I feel to do right by my characters, as though they were real people. I never intended to write a sequel to If I Stay but wound up writing one in part because I felt that Adam and Mia needed to be taken to a better place. Sometimes I wonder if that stems from that sense of responsibility I had when writing about real people and not wanting to twist or deform their stories to fit my own need (and there is often a lot of pressure to do that as a journalist, alas).

PL: Music plays a big role in your books. How does it connect with your writing process?

GF: Music definitely played a big role in my first three novels, less so in the two I'm working on now. I tend to write about things that are emotional trigger points for me, and music has always been that, since I was little. I used to live in a boring suburb but there was this one really cool used and new record store and I would go there for hours and end. The guys that worked there,  total music geeks, straight out of High Fidelity, humored me for some reason (maybe because I was the one who bought the foreign imports of those "Eyeless in Gaza" EPs) but music always was the thing that could make me feel deeply and it also seemed to represent an escape to a larger world. And it stayed that way for me as I got older and I wound up with musician friends and married a musician so it's not so surprising that many of my characters are musicians, even though I decidedly am not. The book I'm working on now substitutes travel, and acting, for music, and those were other world-opening things for me when I was younger (and now).

PL: What do you think makes certain YA books appeal to adult audiences?

GF: On one level, a good book is a good book is a good book. You can deconstruct The Hunger Games all you want, but at the end of the day, it's an incredibly compelling and original story that you can't read fast enough. It's what most readers, adult and younger, look for. I think the crossover books are first and foremost good reads. I think there are also other factors: A certain sophistication in the writing, or rather a not dumbing down, which I don't think many YA authors do. Universal themes that tap into something across the age spectrum. And I also think it's a golden age for YA, where we can take risks and bend the medium a bit and it's not too heavy-handed or self important but can still be something as outrageous and subversive as Libba Bray's Going Bovine or Beauty Queens  or as complex or woven as John Corey Whaley's Where Things Come Back or emotionally resonant as anything Melina Marchetta is writing these days.

PL: You’ve mentioned in other interviews that you don’t outline your novels. Has that led to making totally unexpected discoveries about characters while you’re writing your books? Alternatively, do you ever find yourself going down a rabbit hole and then abandoning what you’ve written?

GF: My favorite part of writing are those unexpected discoveries I make while actually sitting in front of a computer and typing. The way two disparate elements fifty pages apart will suddenly click together or how I'll have no idea how something is going to work out, but while writing, the doors will just open. I'm not saying that these things can't happen if you outline; many authors say that outlining is what allows this process. But for me, the less I know where the next pages are coming, the more naturally and authentically a story seems to come. The novel I'm working on now is a very different process than the ones I've written before. It is much more intricately plotted, by necessity. So there were parts that while not outlined, I knew I had to include certain elements, and I found these parts extraordinarily difficult to write while the middle bits--and the middle bit of a book is usually the hardest--was joyful and easy because I had far fewer signposts to follow.

As for rabbit holes, I go down a lot of those. Sometimes I write ENTIRE BOOKS that I wind up shelving. And even with books that I publish, I write multiple drafts before I ever turn it into my editor—Where She Went had over twenty; the current book is up to fifteen and I'm about to turn it in. All those drafts represent wrong turns and rabbit holes but I sort of feel like that's necessary to the process of finding the right book.