JOHN GREEN #ALLABOUTWRITING

Q. What is your writing process?A. I usually get up in the morning and write for four hours, and then I eat lunch, and then in the afternoon I do web and youtube and businessy stuff for five hours. My work day is eight AM to six PM with an hour for lunch. I don’t always stick to this schedule–I travel a lot and some days I have to do non-writing stuff all day. But I am pretty good about the schedule.

Q. How do you deal with writers’ block?
A. I just give myself permission to suck. I delete about 90% of my first drafts (the only exception to this rule so far has been Will Grayson, Will Grayson) so it doesn’t really matter much if on a particular day I write beautiful and brilliant prose that will stick in the minds of my readers forever, because there’s a 90% chance I’m just gonna delete whatever I write anyway. I find this hugely liberating.
I also like to remind myself of something my dad said to me once in re. writers’ block: “Coal miners don’t get coal miners’ block.”

Q. Where do you get your ideas for your books?
A. Well, my books don’t have capital-i Ideas, really. I don’t have ideas that hit like a ton of bricks out of nowhere, like BAM! Write a book about a wizard school! Or, Bam! Vampires in Suburbia! The ideas for my books come from lower case-i ideas.Looking for Alaska began, really, in thinking about whether there was meaning to suffering, and how one can reconcile one’s self to a world where suffering is so unjustly distributed. Paper Towns began with thinking about our fascination with manic pixie dream girls and our relentless misimagining of each other. Then little ideas will come along and link up to other little ideas and then in a few short years, I have a book. I would love to have a high-concept book idea fall out of the sky and hit me one day, but it hasn’t happened yet.

Q. How do you feel about your books after you’re done writing them?A. It varies. I am usually pretty disappointed with the book when I finally turn in the last draft and hear that I can’t revise it any further. I worry a lot that no one will like it and that I’ve failed and that I haven’t lived up to the story. Then when it comes out there’s a weird adjustment and I find myself really protective of the book and increasingly proud of it. Then after a while it settles into ambivalence for me, to be totally honest. I still feel proud of the books I’ve written, but they also feel very *finished* to me. They belong to their readers now, which is a great thing–because the books are more powerful in the hands of my readers than they could ever be in my hands.

Q. Have you ever felt, midway through a book, that you didn’t have any more ideas and you wouldn’t be able to finish writing it?
A. Oh yeah all the time. And sometimes I don’t finish the book–or at least not for a long time. That’s always a bit depressing, but I don’t think it’s wasted time–even if you end up not finishing the story. You were learning something as a writer that you needed to learn. The difficult thing is figuring out when a story really SHOULD be abandoned, and when it’s just the mid-story blues–which I think happens to every book.

Q. When did you know you wanted to write?
A. I knew I liked writing from the time I was very young, so I don’t think I ever reallydecided to write. I just kinda kept writing, even when I didn’t show much potential. I never thought that I would be able to write for a living or anything, and I still don’t feel comfortable saying that, like, writing is my job. (And in many ways it isn’t. I have several jobs.)

Q.  How do you write young adult novels when you are not an adolescent yourself?

A. Well, it’s a lot easier than writing about, like, vampires, because I used to be an adolescent. But in truth all fiction is an attempt at empathy: When I write, I’m trying to imagine what it’s like to be someone else more than I’m trying to express what it’s like to be me. So in that sense, it’s very helpful for me to write from the perspectives of characters who are at least a little different from me. Of course, I’m a writer of limited talents, and I don’t feel that I can stray too far from myself.

Q. Are you currently working on a novel?
A. Yes, I am always working on a novel, although I guess it depends on how you define “working” and “on.” I’ve become very superstitious, however, about saying more than that, because while I was writing the book that became The Fault in Our Stars, I promised many different stories–a zombie apocalypse novel, a novel about kids stranded on a desert island–and then delivered a very different book. So you’ll have to trust me that I’m working.

Q.  Did you study writing in school?
A. To an extent. I don’t have an MFA or anything, but I did take creative writing classes in high school and I took a hugely helpful fiction writing class at Kenyon with P. F. Kluge. If it hadn’t been for that class, I don’t think I would’ve ever written a book.
I also received much training after I graduated from college from my mentor, Ilene Cooper, and from many other writers and editors at Booklist.

Q.  Do you ever wake up in the morning and dread writing?
A. No, not that I can remember. I often get mad at myself because I’m writing poorly, or worry that I’ll never write another book, or feel frustrated because I’m up against the limits of my talents, but I never dread writing. So I often feel that I’m not up to the task, but I never dread it.

Q.  Do you ever think about writing an “adult book”?
A.  Not really. I don’t find adults very interesting, to be honest with you.

Q. Do you research your ideas beforehand (such as cancer in TFIOS)?
A. Well, I spent about a decade writing the story that eventually became The Fault in Our Stars, and I definitely did a lot of research along the way. I talked to a lot of cancer survivors and their families, and I also read a lot about the disease itself and its treatments. I really enjoy research, atlhough in the case of TFiOS it was perhaps not great for my hypochondria.

Q.  How many drafts do you do?
A. That really depends on how you define “draft.” I believe that all writing is rewriting–even when you’re writing something down for the first time, it’s still an act of translation in a way because you’re trying to use text to bring life to this thing that exists in your mind. And I’m a big believer in revision: I almost always delete most of my first drafts (often as much as 90%). But there are many mini-drafts along the way, so it’s hard to talk about the process quantitatively. I do try to save the file with a different name each time I’ve made some dramatic changes I fear I might later regret, so that’s some measure, maybe, of how many drafts there are. The final copy of Katherines on my hard drive is called aok284; the final copy of TFiOS is called okay192.

Q. Do you talk about what you’re working on with your editor or wife?
A. Yes, both. I’ve been working with my editor and publishing, Julie Strauss-Gabel, for more than a decade now, and I often show her scraps and chapters and excerpts and all variety of unfinished things. But when I get on a roll, she usually doesn’t hear from me for a while, because I like to send her at least something of a finished manuscript once we agree that I’m on the right track.
I also read a lot to my wife, Sarah, who has informed and shaped all my books in uncountable ways. (Many of the most quoted lines in books are actually Sarah’s, and in general our conversations about art and meaning and everything else are hugely important to me.)

Q. What books would you recommend for a young adult?
A. There are so many. The Book Thief. How I Live Now. The First Part Last. Feed.The Astonishing Life of Octavian Nothing, Traitor to the Nation. 13 Little Blue Envelopes. Story of a Girl. White Cat (and sequels). Every Day.
I could go on for weeks. Let me steer you toward one book, though, that partly inspired An Imperial Affliction, the nonexistent novel I write about in The Fault in Our Stars. It’s called The Blood of the Lamb, and it’s by Peter de Vries, and although it is hardly read at all today, it is one of my favorite books ever.

Cassandra Clare #ALLABOUTWRITING

ADVICE FOR WRITING TEENS.

1) You need to develop a self-critical eye.

If you're looking for tips you could do worse than read John Scalzi's post on the topic: 10 Things Teenage Writers Should Know About Writing. His advice is good. Many people take objection to the "Your writing sucks" aspect of it. What I find enlightening is reading through the comments and seeing all the posts by teenage writers who claim their writing doesn't suck. And yes, in the case of teenage writers, there are always those whose writing is surprisingly good. The youngest person I know to sell a book was nineteen at the time. But the people who are posting and saying that their writing doesn't suck are probably the ones whose writing doessuck. That's because it takes a long time to develop a self-critical eye and see where your writing is going wrong and what about it needs improving. Among the writers I know, many very successful and award-winning, they all think their writing sucks about half the time. The writers I know who think their writing is unimpeachably wonderful mostly do suck, and that goes for adults as well as teens. What you need to do is develop a sense of what you're doing, what needs fixing, how you're writing is flowing, all that stuff. And developing that sense takes time. I often suggest critique groups or classes at this juncture because having someone else critique your writing will get you started on being able to critique it yourself.

2) Quit worrying about being published RIGHT NOW.

Jeez, guys, what's the rush? The number of people who get published in their teens is vanishingly small. And as Justine Larbalestier points out in her wise articleToo Young To Publish, when they do get published, it is not always a good thing. Being published before you're thirty is considered young to be published; when you're published as a teen, it's newsworthy because you are so young, but you're also treated like a dog who paints. It doesn't really matter if the paintings are good, it's just exciting that the dog can do it in the first place. That's not always such a great feeling. Anyway, telling yourself that you need to be PUBLISHED RIGHT NOW is putting an awful lot of unnecessary pressure on yourself. Being published is not the ultimate measure of the worth of what you do. What you should be concentrating on now is working on your writing, polishing it, and making it better. Show it to people (not your parents) who can critique it for you — an online writing workshop like critters.org can be helpful. Or take writing classes — if your school doesn't offer them, a local university probably does. I took writing classes at UCLA when I was in high school, frinstance. Objective, professional adult readers can tell you how ready you are for publication.

3) Read a lot.

If you don't like reading, and you don't read, you probably won't ever be a good writer. That's about as close as I get to making incendiary and definite statements about writing, but I think it's true (and was first said to me by a writing professor in college, who said she couldn't figure out why people who don't like to read want to write — would you really want to be a singer if you didn't like music? — and said that in all the years she'd taught she'd never come across anyone who didn't read who was any good at writing.) Reading will help you develop your own voice, and the more widely you read, the sooner you'll develop an individual voice that doesn't sound just like whatever your favorite book or writer sounds like. Reading can teach you what writing is supposed to sound like, and also what it's not supposed to sound like. For instance, the other day a teen writer sent me a story that began something like this:

"AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAURGGHGHGHGGH," he screamed. It was dark. Dark! Everything was dark!!!!!!!! 

Have you ever read a book which featured quite so many exclamation points after an observation like "Everything was dark?" Probably not, right? If no one in the history of the published word has pulled this sort of thing off there's probably a reason.

4) You're going to write just like your favorite writers do, and that's okay. For now.

When I was a teenager, everything I wrote sounded like whatever book I liked at the time. After I read The Mists of Avalon I wrote an Arthurian book and after I read the Anne Rice books I wrote about vampires and after I read Ender's Game I wrote science fiction and it was all very derivative and silly. But it was still good practice. All writing is good practice and individual voice develops over time. I can't count the amount of letters I get from teens saying they're writing a book about a girl in love with a vampire. Aha. So you love Twilight, and that's great. It's wonderful when you love a book so much. But it can also be helpful to look under the surface of what it is that you love about a book. Is it vampires you like so much, or the idea of eternal, immutable yet impossible love? — i.e.: maybe it's the dynamic of the book that truly moves you, and there are all sorts of ways to ring changes on that dynamic, and make it your own. Often that comes over time — influences never really fade, but by the time you're an adult writer, you'll probably be a varied amalgam of all your influences, and mixing them together is a great way to come up with something entirely new. Go ahead and be influenced, just be aware of how and why.

5) Don't worry about being perfect.

Yeah, I know I just said you need to be self-critical and you should be. But you should also be having fun with your writing. All that crappy writing I was doing when I was a teenager, I was having a hell of a good time. I wrote a 1,000 page romantic epic called The Beautiful Cassandra based on the story Jane Austen wrote about her sister when she was twelve. (You can read it here. The Jane Austen story I mean, not my novel. ) It was terrible, but boy did I have fun writing it (and my friends had fun reading it.) One of the great joys of being so young and writing for fun is the lack of pressure and freedom to write whatever you want. So don't endlessly beat yourself up about getting everything right — enjoy what you're doing, accept that writing for practice alone isn't writing wasted, and neither is writing for fun alone. Enjoy yourself. Oh, and just as a tiny side note, when you're writing to authors and asking for advice, don't write to ten authors at once and tell them all they're you're favorite author. We do compare notes, and we're on to your shell game. *beady eye* This means you.

For the link click here