Catherine Linka's Blog - Posts Tagged "a-girl-called-fearless"
The Strata of Inspiration
When I ask writers what inspired their novel they usually tell me about an event in their lives such as:
“My family accidentally drove off and left me at a gas station when I was 10” (Jen White)
or
“I got a copy of my father’s FBI file from the Hollywood Blacklist era.” (Leda Siskind)
In a books, we’d call this the inciting event that causes everything to happen. For A GIRL CALLED FEARLESS, the inciting event was reading a book that pissed me off.
I loved spec and dystopian fiction, and how they pose big questions--like what does it mean to be human. But then I read a book that was so stupid in how it pictured America after a catastrophe and how it imagined people would behave, and I just lost it.
For 3 days, I muttered to myself, “Well, this wouldn’t have happened and that wouldn’t have happened.” I was obsessed. So I realized I needed to clear my head by write down these thoughts.
Forty pages later, I realized I was writing a novel.
My friend Julie Berry says that sometimes when you write, you’re on a “quest.” You know you want to write about truth or justice or family relationships. But other times, you fall down a rabbit hole into a story you never expected to write.
I did not plan to write A Girl Called Fearless, but I heard Avie’s voice in my head. She was 16, almost 17, a junior in a girls school in Pasadena. She and all her friends had lost their moms and sisters, but she still dreamed about going to Occidental College, and drinking coffee with her lifelong friend Yates--if she could get her bodyguard to sit at a different table.
I knew I didn’t want to write another Katniss. I wanted to write about a typical LA teen--stuck in a horrible situation she’s not sure she’ll survive.
Not only was Avie alive in my head, but the world was vivid. As I thought about what it would be like to lose so many women--what would happen to the economy, society, politics--the answers just came to me.
And this shows how while an inciting event sparks a story, a writer’s past and experience, interests and passions put the meat on the story’s bones.
I drew on my knowledge of women’s issues in Asia, Africa and the Middle East to think about how American fathers would want to protect their daughters’ purity. A news junkie, I’d seen the rise of the Tea Party, and imagined a new party--the Paternalists-- exploiting men’s fears to capture political power. And having worked in marketing, I could easily imagine how Americans would exploit a shortage of girls as a marketing opportunity.
The reasons a writer is compelled to write a particular book are as layered as the strata of the earth. We write stories that connect to our core--to who we are as people and what we value in this world--to what frightens us, excites us, and what sparks our anger.
I probably wouldn’t have written AGCF if I didn’t have a dad who took me to climb Half Dome at age 11 or if I wasn’t someone whose headmaster threatened to expel her for protesting every injustice I saw in high school.
Because our stories express who we are at the core, if we peel back another layer of the strata we see that our stories are “our stories” in disguise.
A lot of the time, a writer doesn’t realize what a story is really about until the first draft is done and then it can take a friend pointing out that the main character is the writer--in another shape or form, who is dealing with the same issues or emotions the writer has.
I realized recently that A Girl Called Fearless isn’t just Avie’s survival story--it’s mine.
Right before I began this book, my family had been through hell. There are times in your life when you don’t know if you’re going to make it. When everything you’ve tried, hasn’t worked, and when you realize how little power you have to fix things. But you get up every morning and try again, because your other choice is to roll up in a ball and cry.
At the beginning of A Girl Called Fearless, Avie says, “I’m not fearless, but I love that Yates thinks I am.” But at the end of book 1 after she’s seen what she’s survived, she says, “I am fearless.”
Now I realize why it was so important to me to write about a typical girl--not a ninja or a superhero--because I survived what I didn’t imagine I could, and I want kids who don’t think they’re special to see they too have strength inside them they never imagined.
“My family accidentally drove off and left me at a gas station when I was 10” (Jen White)
or
“I got a copy of my father’s FBI file from the Hollywood Blacklist era.” (Leda Siskind)
In a books, we’d call this the inciting event that causes everything to happen. For A GIRL CALLED FEARLESS, the inciting event was reading a book that pissed me off.
I loved spec and dystopian fiction, and how they pose big questions--like what does it mean to be human. But then I read a book that was so stupid in how it pictured America after a catastrophe and how it imagined people would behave, and I just lost it.
For 3 days, I muttered to myself, “Well, this wouldn’t have happened and that wouldn’t have happened.” I was obsessed. So I realized I needed to clear my head by write down these thoughts.
Forty pages later, I realized I was writing a novel.
My friend Julie Berry says that sometimes when you write, you’re on a “quest.” You know you want to write about truth or justice or family relationships. But other times, you fall down a rabbit hole into a story you never expected to write.
I did not plan to write A Girl Called Fearless, but I heard Avie’s voice in my head. She was 16, almost 17, a junior in a girls school in Pasadena. She and all her friends had lost their moms and sisters, but she still dreamed about going to Occidental College, and drinking coffee with her lifelong friend Yates--if she could get her bodyguard to sit at a different table.
I knew I didn’t want to write another Katniss. I wanted to write about a typical LA teen--stuck in a horrible situation she’s not sure she’ll survive.
Not only was Avie alive in my head, but the world was vivid. As I thought about what it would be like to lose so many women--what would happen to the economy, society, politics--the answers just came to me.
And this shows how while an inciting event sparks a story, a writer’s past and experience, interests and passions put the meat on the story’s bones.
I drew on my knowledge of women’s issues in Asia, Africa and the Middle East to think about how American fathers would want to protect their daughters’ purity. A news junkie, I’d seen the rise of the Tea Party, and imagined a new party--the Paternalists-- exploiting men’s fears to capture political power. And having worked in marketing, I could easily imagine how Americans would exploit a shortage of girls as a marketing opportunity.
The reasons a writer is compelled to write a particular book are as layered as the strata of the earth. We write stories that connect to our core--to who we are as people and what we value in this world--to what frightens us, excites us, and what sparks our anger.
I probably wouldn’t have written AGCF if I didn’t have a dad who took me to climb Half Dome at age 11 or if I wasn’t someone whose headmaster threatened to expel her for protesting every injustice I saw in high school.
Because our stories express who we are at the core, if we peel back another layer of the strata we see that our stories are “our stories” in disguise.
A lot of the time, a writer doesn’t realize what a story is really about until the first draft is done and then it can take a friend pointing out that the main character is the writer--in another shape or form, who is dealing with the same issues or emotions the writer has.
I realized recently that A Girl Called Fearless isn’t just Avie’s survival story--it’s mine.
Right before I began this book, my family had been through hell. There are times in your life when you don’t know if you’re going to make it. When everything you’ve tried, hasn’t worked, and when you realize how little power you have to fix things. But you get up every morning and try again, because your other choice is to roll up in a ball and cry.
At the beginning of A Girl Called Fearless, Avie says, “I’m not fearless, but I love that Yates thinks I am.” But at the end of book 1 after she’s seen what she’s survived, she says, “I am fearless.”
Now I realize why it was so important to me to write about a typical girl--not a ninja or a superhero--because I survived what I didn’t imagine I could, and I want kids who don’t think they’re special to see they too have strength inside them they never imagined.
