Interview with Maureen Ulrich
Dear Blog,
Here is my interview with Maureen Ulrich, the author of an excellent girls' hockey trilogy: Power Plays, Face Off, and Breakaway. Thank you so much for visiting my blog, Maureen. *pours coffee for self and for Maureen*
Rather than me trying to describe the Jessie Mac books, I'll get you to do it! What are the books are about?
I view each of these books as “A Season in Jessie MacIntyre’s Life.” Each one follows the rollercoaster of her hockey, and hopefully each one also sheds some light on issues that teenage girls face: bullying, friendship, self-esteem, binge drinking, and dating.
Power Plays is Jessie’s Grade Nine year. She has just moved to a new city and is having trouble making friends. She ends up running afoul of two girls, who make her life miserable and sometimes, very scary. Jessie doesn’t tell her parents, thinking the harassment will stop if she can avoid the bullies. Jessie makes friends when she starts playing girls’ hockey, and from them she learns a lot about what it takes to be part of a team.
Face Off focuses mostly on Jessie’s Grade Ten year. Because Jessie makes a bad decision at a party, she learns just how easy it is to damage her reputation. In addition, her hockey team has leadership and coaching problems. It isn’t easy staying motivated to play her best when the dressing room isn’t fun anymore. This is the year Jessie realizes just how much can be going on “behind someone’s face.”
In Breakaway, Jessie is in Grade Twelve and is playing her last year of minor hockey. She is nervous about AAA and worries that her team won’t win a single game. She also frets about her future. What will she take at university? Will she be able to keep playing hockey after high school?
I can’t talk about The Jessie Mac Series without mentioning Mark Taylor. He is very much the object of Jessie’s affections, and she has to learn to sort out her feelings for him.
I hope Jessie is a well-rounded character, with strengths and flaws. My intention is to show, through her thoughts and actions, what it means to be motivated by integrity and loyalty.
The books are meant to be an honest reflection of what it is like playing a sport. My husband, who coached our daughters, always told the girls, “The highs can’t be too high, and the lows can’t be too low.” Such good advice.
Having taught high school for years, and having two teenage daughters, did you ever find yourself writing a character that was too close to a "real" person?
I often start from a real person as a reference point. Too close to a real person? I would say not. It takes very little time for the character to start moving further and further away from the real person. The character has a different background from the real person. His or her experiences and interactions other characters make him or her unique.
The books have a lot of secondary / minor characters, obviously, since you need to make up a team and then some. Though I sometimes wanted MORE of the characters I particularly liked, I was impressed that you managed to make each one feel real and memorable without resorting to cliches or cardboard cut-outs, and without letting anybody's side-story bog down the pace of the Big Story or the focus on Jessie. Did this require a ton of editing and revision? Can you tell us anything about balancing a large cast of characters in a fast-paced story?
I had a very steep learning curve on this topic. I wrote Face Off and Breakaway in entirely different fashions. In Face Off, I set out to gradually introduce the reader to the girls on Jessie’s past team the Xtreme, and the new players on the Rage. I wanted each girl to have an identity and make a contribution to the plot and the team. The feedback I got from adult readers indicated that I had “too many characters.” My sister-in-law actually provided some great insight on this. She said, “This wasn’t an issue in Power Plays. There were only a few girls that were integral to the plot. The rest just filled in the dressing room.” I tried to act on this advice in Breakaway – but I did so AFTER I had written the entire draft, in which Larissa had a far bigger role. I decided to move Kathy front and center (literally, she plays center, right?) and push Larissa into the background again. Juggling these hockey girls has been an adventure, that’s for sure.
Do you have a favourite non-Jessie character in the books? If so, who, and why?
Kathy certainly comes to mind. I liked the way she became part of Jessie’s conscience in Breakaway. I like the way she doesn’t “play games” off the ice. Kathy tells it like she sees it, and I hope readers enjoy her sense of humour.
Kathy was one of my favourites too :). Why did you decide to write in the first person? Did you ever consider third person?
The first six drafts of Power Plays were in third person. Probably the best decision I ever made was to switch to first person and present tense. I did this because of the popularity of The Outsiders with my Grade Eight Students. Using first person allowed me to find Jessie’s voice.
Wow, I am trying to imagine the book as a third person novel. Definitely works well in first person. So, when you wrote the first book, did you know you were writing a series? If not, when did you know it was going to be a series?
I thought I might write a series, but I thought the other books would be from other female hockey players’ viewpoints. That was before I found Jessie’s voice. Somewhere along the way I realized Jessie and her friends could show teenage girls how to treat one another and deal with conflict.
Frankly I revised Power Plays (originally called Not Just a Boys’ Game) so many times, I never felt I had time to work on a sequel!
One of the very great pleasures of a series (speaking both as a reader and as a writer) is that the characters have time to grow, and you can create a more complicated and fuller arc. This is not only true of Jessie, but of many of the secondary characters too. Jodi in particular has a very interesting story-line. How much of the full three-book arc did you imagine from the get-go, and how much just came to you as you started the second and third books?
I would say that I saw very little of it. I knew Jodi’s binge drinking would catch up with her in Face Off, but I didn’t know exactly when it would occur. I remember my excitement when I realized, “Yes, THIS is where it happens!”
It’s funny how Power Plays left “doors” open for me in Face Off. For instance, when Jessie asks Mark, “Why did your parents break up?” and he never tells her, I didn’t actually know the answer.
The Evan-Jessie storyline in Breakaway was originally supposed to have happened in her “unrecorded” Grade Eleven year. Probably I should have written a book about this year, because I had enough storylines in Breakaway to fill two books.
Of the three books in the series, which was the easiest or the most fun to write?
I usually describe Power Plays as a reno. You would not see much similarity between the original manuscript and the one Coteau published. It took three years to write, and five years to revise. I still look at it and view certain scenes as “rooms” that I wish I had demolished.
Face Off was by far the easiest. I wrote about half of the manuscript, then wrote the ending, and wrote up to the ending. I knew where I was going, and that made all the difference. I did do some heavy revisions on some flashback scenes I had used, but structurally, the book changed very little from the pre-editing stage draft.
Breakaway was written in the least amount of time, but I paid for that in the revision stages. You’d think I’d know more by the time I got to the third book, but I really didn’t. I think writing a manuscript is very much like raising a child. They can get away on you, and you don’t have the objectivity to step back and figure out what’s not working. You might sense that something isn’t, but it’s hard to put it in a nutshell what it is.
When people ask me what my books are about, I can’t put the description into ONE cohesive sentence. Maybe that’s not a good thing, but maybe it is. Maybe it means there are enough layers to satisfy different kinds of readers.
Do you have a favourite, now that they are all finished?
I don’t think I have a favourite book. I have favourite moments in all of them. The book with the most of these is probably Breakaway, so I guess that one is closest to being my favourite. I worked hard to put a “gem” on every page.
You have mentioned that you might write another Jessie Mac book. Can you share any of your thoughts about this, or is it Top Secret?
University hockey has many challenges. Outsiders might regard it as fun, but it can take a huge emotional toll on players. I think I might like to explore this, but I haven’t written a word yet. I do jot down notes while I am watching hockey. I think it would be fun to project Jessie, Kathy, and Amy into their university years, but I don’t know if I can stomach concocting an entire manuscript of hockey narrative. If only I could keep the girls in the dressing room!
You mentioned also that you are working on a fantasy novel right now. I'm excited! What can you tell us about it? How are you finding writing fantasy, after writing contemporary YA?
My fantasy is actually more “alternative history.” There is no magic, although there is a great deal of superstition. Several cultures are threatened by the aggression of another warlike culture and their cold-blooded leader (Roland). Gabrielle and Damon, my main characters, have lived in several of these cultures. They share the gifts of languages and intelligence. Damon has the mind of an engineer while Gabrielle is a naturalist.
The biggest difference between this manuscript and The Jessie Mac Series –is the humour. This manuscript just seems so serious. Revenge motivates most of my characters, and ultimately I want to show how self-destructive this can be.
Another difference is the shifts in narration. I try to stick to Gabrielle and Damon, but I do step outside their viewpoints so that readers get a better sense of some of the other major players.
You also write youth theater, is that right? How different is that from writing fiction? How do you organize such different writing projects (in terms of time / mental space)?
I haven’t written many youth plays lately. I wrote them mostly for schools where I taught. I recall auditioning kids for The Banes of Darkwood (then called A Splash of Horror) when I hadn’t even written the final scene! I gave a Grade 8 boy the part of Uncle Lester, even though I hadn’t written a single line of dialogue for that role. Naturally I did have the play finished by the time we had our first rehearsal/read through.
Deadlines are very motivating! I finish what I need to finish first.
I write a play when I know a theatre group is going to be performing it. Currently, I have only three completed plays that have never been performed – out of around thirty total.
I am a binge writer. Being involved with writing groups and other writers definitely helps me to keep working on manuscripts. I wish I could say that I write a certain amount every day. I do have a fulltime job and some heavy volunteer commitments. I try not to let these things push my writing too far into the background.
What are your lowest and highest moments, as a writer?
I am so lucky. I don’t have many low moments. It’s disappointing to have so much success with Power Plays with awards, and not with the other books, but it’s hard to be upset when I have such a great relationship with my publisher. There are many writers out there, with the noses pressed up against the pane of publication, wanting to get out of the cold. I am blessed to have a few publications out there, and I don’t take a moment of that for granted.
My highest moments? Invariably they are when non-readers get turned on to reading because of Jessie Mac. I know a man in his mid-fifties who reads extensively now although he hadn’t picked up a single book between high school and 2007 when he started reading Power Plays. I am really proud that Jessie can reach out and influence a reader in this way.
Book recommendations please! Can you name a few of your favourite books when you were a child, and a few of your favourites now? What should my legions of blog-readers be reading?
My favourites growing up:
The Black Stallion series, Walter Farley
Exodus, Leon Uris
The Virginian, Owen Wister
The Three Musketeers, Alexander Dumas
Prince of Foxes, Samuel Shellebarger (in fact all of his books)
Great Lion of God, Taylor Caldwell
The Big Fisherman, Lloyd C. Douglas
To Kill a Mockingbird, Harper Lee
There wasn’t much YA literature when I was growing up. I think this is a pretty new phenomenon.
I don’t think teen readers can go wrong with anything written by Eric Walters or Carol Matas. I loved The Book Thief by Markus Zusak.
Thank you so much for taking the time to answer all these questions! Maureen Ulrich can be found on-line in the following places:
http://www.maureenulrich.ca/
https://twitter.com/MaureenUlrich
https://www.facebook.com/groups/12823...
Yours, grateful-for-my-writer-friends,
Catherine
Here is my interview with Maureen Ulrich, the author of an excellent girls' hockey trilogy: Power Plays, Face Off, and Breakaway. Thank you so much for visiting my blog, Maureen. *pours coffee for self and for Maureen*
Rather than me trying to describe the Jessie Mac books, I'll get you to do it! What are the books are about?
I view each of these books as “A Season in Jessie MacIntyre’s Life.” Each one follows the rollercoaster of her hockey, and hopefully each one also sheds some light on issues that teenage girls face: bullying, friendship, self-esteem, binge drinking, and dating.
Power Plays is Jessie’s Grade Nine year. She has just moved to a new city and is having trouble making friends. She ends up running afoul of two girls, who make her life miserable and sometimes, very scary. Jessie doesn’t tell her parents, thinking the harassment will stop if she can avoid the bullies. Jessie makes friends when she starts playing girls’ hockey, and from them she learns a lot about what it takes to be part of a team.
Face Off focuses mostly on Jessie’s Grade Ten year. Because Jessie makes a bad decision at a party, she learns just how easy it is to damage her reputation. In addition, her hockey team has leadership and coaching problems. It isn’t easy staying motivated to play her best when the dressing room isn’t fun anymore. This is the year Jessie realizes just how much can be going on “behind someone’s face.”
In Breakaway, Jessie is in Grade Twelve and is playing her last year of minor hockey. She is nervous about AAA and worries that her team won’t win a single game. She also frets about her future. What will she take at university? Will she be able to keep playing hockey after high school?
I can’t talk about The Jessie Mac Series without mentioning Mark Taylor. He is very much the object of Jessie’s affections, and she has to learn to sort out her feelings for him.
I hope Jessie is a well-rounded character, with strengths and flaws. My intention is to show, through her thoughts and actions, what it means to be motivated by integrity and loyalty.
The books are meant to be an honest reflection of what it is like playing a sport. My husband, who coached our daughters, always told the girls, “The highs can’t be too high, and the lows can’t be too low.” Such good advice.
Having taught high school for years, and having two teenage daughters, did you ever find yourself writing a character that was too close to a "real" person?
I often start from a real person as a reference point. Too close to a real person? I would say not. It takes very little time for the character to start moving further and further away from the real person. The character has a different background from the real person. His or her experiences and interactions other characters make him or her unique.
The books have a lot of secondary / minor characters, obviously, since you need to make up a team and then some. Though I sometimes wanted MORE of the characters I particularly liked, I was impressed that you managed to make each one feel real and memorable without resorting to cliches or cardboard cut-outs, and without letting anybody's side-story bog down the pace of the Big Story or the focus on Jessie. Did this require a ton of editing and revision? Can you tell us anything about balancing a large cast of characters in a fast-paced story?
I had a very steep learning curve on this topic. I wrote Face Off and Breakaway in entirely different fashions. In Face Off, I set out to gradually introduce the reader to the girls on Jessie’s past team the Xtreme, and the new players on the Rage. I wanted each girl to have an identity and make a contribution to the plot and the team. The feedback I got from adult readers indicated that I had “too many characters.” My sister-in-law actually provided some great insight on this. She said, “This wasn’t an issue in Power Plays. There were only a few girls that were integral to the plot. The rest just filled in the dressing room.” I tried to act on this advice in Breakaway – but I did so AFTER I had written the entire draft, in which Larissa had a far bigger role. I decided to move Kathy front and center (literally, she plays center, right?) and push Larissa into the background again. Juggling these hockey girls has been an adventure, that’s for sure.
Do you have a favourite non-Jessie character in the books? If so, who, and why?
Kathy certainly comes to mind. I liked the way she became part of Jessie’s conscience in Breakaway. I like the way she doesn’t “play games” off the ice. Kathy tells it like she sees it, and I hope readers enjoy her sense of humour.
Kathy was one of my favourites too :). Why did you decide to write in the first person? Did you ever consider third person?
The first six drafts of Power Plays were in third person. Probably the best decision I ever made was to switch to first person and present tense. I did this because of the popularity of The Outsiders with my Grade Eight Students. Using first person allowed me to find Jessie’s voice.
Wow, I am trying to imagine the book as a third person novel. Definitely works well in first person. So, when you wrote the first book, did you know you were writing a series? If not, when did you know it was going to be a series?
I thought I might write a series, but I thought the other books would be from other female hockey players’ viewpoints. That was before I found Jessie’s voice. Somewhere along the way I realized Jessie and her friends could show teenage girls how to treat one another and deal with conflict.
Frankly I revised Power Plays (originally called Not Just a Boys’ Game) so many times, I never felt I had time to work on a sequel!
One of the very great pleasures of a series (speaking both as a reader and as a writer) is that the characters have time to grow, and you can create a more complicated and fuller arc. This is not only true of Jessie, but of many of the secondary characters too. Jodi in particular has a very interesting story-line. How much of the full three-book arc did you imagine from the get-go, and how much just came to you as you started the second and third books?
I would say that I saw very little of it. I knew Jodi’s binge drinking would catch up with her in Face Off, but I didn’t know exactly when it would occur. I remember my excitement when I realized, “Yes, THIS is where it happens!”
It’s funny how Power Plays left “doors” open for me in Face Off. For instance, when Jessie asks Mark, “Why did your parents break up?” and he never tells her, I didn’t actually know the answer.
The Evan-Jessie storyline in Breakaway was originally supposed to have happened in her “unrecorded” Grade Eleven year. Probably I should have written a book about this year, because I had enough storylines in Breakaway to fill two books.
Of the three books in the series, which was the easiest or the most fun to write?
I usually describe Power Plays as a reno. You would not see much similarity between the original manuscript and the one Coteau published. It took three years to write, and five years to revise. I still look at it and view certain scenes as “rooms” that I wish I had demolished.
Face Off was by far the easiest. I wrote about half of the manuscript, then wrote the ending, and wrote up to the ending. I knew where I was going, and that made all the difference. I did do some heavy revisions on some flashback scenes I had used, but structurally, the book changed very little from the pre-editing stage draft.
Breakaway was written in the least amount of time, but I paid for that in the revision stages. You’d think I’d know more by the time I got to the third book, but I really didn’t. I think writing a manuscript is very much like raising a child. They can get away on you, and you don’t have the objectivity to step back and figure out what’s not working. You might sense that something isn’t, but it’s hard to put it in a nutshell what it is.
When people ask me what my books are about, I can’t put the description into ONE cohesive sentence. Maybe that’s not a good thing, but maybe it is. Maybe it means there are enough layers to satisfy different kinds of readers.
Do you have a favourite, now that they are all finished?
I don’t think I have a favourite book. I have favourite moments in all of them. The book with the most of these is probably Breakaway, so I guess that one is closest to being my favourite. I worked hard to put a “gem” on every page.
You have mentioned that you might write another Jessie Mac book. Can you share any of your thoughts about this, or is it Top Secret?
University hockey has many challenges. Outsiders might regard it as fun, but it can take a huge emotional toll on players. I think I might like to explore this, but I haven’t written a word yet. I do jot down notes while I am watching hockey. I think it would be fun to project Jessie, Kathy, and Amy into their university years, but I don’t know if I can stomach concocting an entire manuscript of hockey narrative. If only I could keep the girls in the dressing room!
You mentioned also that you are working on a fantasy novel right now. I'm excited! What can you tell us about it? How are you finding writing fantasy, after writing contemporary YA?
My fantasy is actually more “alternative history.” There is no magic, although there is a great deal of superstition. Several cultures are threatened by the aggression of another warlike culture and their cold-blooded leader (Roland). Gabrielle and Damon, my main characters, have lived in several of these cultures. They share the gifts of languages and intelligence. Damon has the mind of an engineer while Gabrielle is a naturalist.
The biggest difference between this manuscript and The Jessie Mac Series –is the humour. This manuscript just seems so serious. Revenge motivates most of my characters, and ultimately I want to show how self-destructive this can be.
Another difference is the shifts in narration. I try to stick to Gabrielle and Damon, but I do step outside their viewpoints so that readers get a better sense of some of the other major players.
You also write youth theater, is that right? How different is that from writing fiction? How do you organize such different writing projects (in terms of time / mental space)?
I haven’t written many youth plays lately. I wrote them mostly for schools where I taught. I recall auditioning kids for The Banes of Darkwood (then called A Splash of Horror) when I hadn’t even written the final scene! I gave a Grade 8 boy the part of Uncle Lester, even though I hadn’t written a single line of dialogue for that role. Naturally I did have the play finished by the time we had our first rehearsal/read through.
Deadlines are very motivating! I finish what I need to finish first.
I write a play when I know a theatre group is going to be performing it. Currently, I have only three completed plays that have never been performed – out of around thirty total.
I am a binge writer. Being involved with writing groups and other writers definitely helps me to keep working on manuscripts. I wish I could say that I write a certain amount every day. I do have a fulltime job and some heavy volunteer commitments. I try not to let these things push my writing too far into the background.
What are your lowest and highest moments, as a writer?
I am so lucky. I don’t have many low moments. It’s disappointing to have so much success with Power Plays with awards, and not with the other books, but it’s hard to be upset when I have such a great relationship with my publisher. There are many writers out there, with the noses pressed up against the pane of publication, wanting to get out of the cold. I am blessed to have a few publications out there, and I don’t take a moment of that for granted.
My highest moments? Invariably they are when non-readers get turned on to reading because of Jessie Mac. I know a man in his mid-fifties who reads extensively now although he hadn’t picked up a single book between high school and 2007 when he started reading Power Plays. I am really proud that Jessie can reach out and influence a reader in this way.
Book recommendations please! Can you name a few of your favourite books when you were a child, and a few of your favourites now? What should my legions of blog-readers be reading?
My favourites growing up:
The Black Stallion series, Walter Farley
Exodus, Leon Uris
The Virginian, Owen Wister
The Three Musketeers, Alexander Dumas
Prince of Foxes, Samuel Shellebarger (in fact all of his books)
Great Lion of God, Taylor Caldwell
The Big Fisherman, Lloyd C. Douglas
To Kill a Mockingbird, Harper Lee
There wasn’t much YA literature when I was growing up. I think this is a pretty new phenomenon.
I don’t think teen readers can go wrong with anything written by Eric Walters or Carol Matas. I loved The Book Thief by Markus Zusak.
Thank you so much for taking the time to answer all these questions! Maureen Ulrich can be found on-line in the following places:
http://www.maureenulrich.ca/
https://twitter.com/MaureenUlrich
https://www.facebook.com/groups/12823...
Yours, grateful-for-my-writer-friends,
Catherine
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Maureen
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Apr 01, 2013 03:56PM
Thanks, Catherine! You make a great cup of coffee!
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:). Thank you for doing this! I'll make you some real coffee someday ;).
Nice interview, ladies! I enjoyed eavesdropping. ;-)
