My Final Answers

The best advice someone ever gave me in regard to my writing wasn't meant to be advice, and it came in the form of two questions. 1) Can you summarize your novel? And 2) Who’s your audience?

The best advice that I can give YOU if you, too, are a writer is this: Consider those two questions very carefully before trying to impress someone by saying, “I just finished writing a novel.” Because they will surely be asked if this someone you’re trying to impress is even the least bit impressionable.

When the questions were first posed to me, the answer to number one was undoubtedly “no.” The reason I know this with such certainty isn’t because I actually said no… it’s because I gave it the ol’ college try and spewed out a summary that came out like my sixth grade dissertation on Manifest Destiny... VERRRY LOOOONG WINDEDDDDLY. The answer to question number two was “I don’t know.” Again, not because those words were actually spoken, but because I gave an answer that included my late grandparents, the Pope and crack addicts, to name a few. In other words, EVERYONE.

NOT GOOD. Now in my weak defense, I had JUST finished writing it, like TWO SECONDS before the questions were asked. It was hot off the press. We’re talking still steaming and dripping with my naiveté. AND my mind had gone into brain-freeze mode as I had just embarked on the ever-endorsed Novel Sabbatical just before you move on to the more vicious yet refreshing job of editing. OBVIOUSLY… otherwise, why would I have even opened my mouth to do anything more than eat and yawn?? Why would I have expended energy bragging about something that I wasn’t willing to think about, much less SUMMARIZE, for awhile? Well, because I was in brain-freeze mode, that’s why.

“But it’s a GREAT story that’s socially significant and rich in characterization!” I retorted (in my mind) when I felt the sting that comes from a look that whispers, Sorry, Sweetie. But I’ve just quit taking you seriously.

And then I did what any young, sensitive, humiliated and, let’s face it, IGNORANT writer would do… I went home, licked my wounds, and convinced myself that this was a person who was out to get me. A year later, when I realized that this person WAS out to get me, so much so that he MARRIED me, I finally sat down and decided that I’d better figure out how to answer those two questions.

So here we are a year after THAT, a THOUSAND edits later (not to mention a book deal in the works) and I think I’ve finally got the answers...

1) Yes, I CAN summarize it. (But I do it best under the light of a three-quarter moon, during the months of July and August, but only on Sundays, and especially well when there’s a frozen margarita in my left hand.)
2) My audience is primarily young adults… So sue me ‘cause I’d STILL like to believe that my late grandma, the Pope, maybe even crack addicts, would get a kick out of it, too.