Morgan
asked
Michelle Hodkin:
Is there anything you wrote in your books that you wish you could change? Has your opinion towards your books changed since people started reading them?
Michelle Hodkin
There are things I wish I could change. Sentences I cringe at, scenes I wish I'd described with more clarity. But I try to remind myself that some readers love those sentences, and find meaning I didn't intend in those scenes. Once the book is out of my hands, it belongs to you, not me.
My opinion of the books has actually changed since people started reading them. The prevailing sentiment in publishing is that the YA audience will not tolerate an unlikeable heroine, and when I started looking at Unbecoming in the context of the market, I started to panic a bit, thinking that maybe it was true and that my books had no hope of ever finding an audience because I was writing about a bad girl and not a good one. I especially worried about that before Retribution came out, because that's when Mara's identity is revealed to the reader with perfect clarity--she's the hero of her own story, but of not anyone else's. She knows the difference between right and wrong and sometimes she chooses wrong anyway. I was scared that readers who loved the earlier books in the trilogy only did so because they didn't really know Mara then, and once they did, they'd feel betrayed--not by her (which was intentional--she announces her unreliability in sentence one), but by me. Publishing is a long game, and it can be hard to trust your story, and to trust yourself.
But I've been hearing from readers who are reacting to the story in ways I never anticipated, and are finding meaning in it that I didn't even know to hope for. It's too early to know if I'll have said what I wanted to say with these books--I'll probably need decades for that to happen--but I am starting to trust Mara's story more, and myself as a writer.
My opinion of the books has actually changed since people started reading them. The prevailing sentiment in publishing is that the YA audience will not tolerate an unlikeable heroine, and when I started looking at Unbecoming in the context of the market, I started to panic a bit, thinking that maybe it was true and that my books had no hope of ever finding an audience because I was writing about a bad girl and not a good one. I especially worried about that before Retribution came out, because that's when Mara's identity is revealed to the reader with perfect clarity--she's the hero of her own story, but of not anyone else's. She knows the difference between right and wrong and sometimes she chooses wrong anyway. I was scared that readers who loved the earlier books in the trilogy only did so because they didn't really know Mara then, and once they did, they'd feel betrayed--not by her (which was intentional--she announces her unreliability in sentence one), but by me. Publishing is a long game, and it can be hard to trust your story, and to trust yourself.
But I've been hearing from readers who are reacting to the story in ways I never anticipated, and are finding meaning in it that I didn't even know to hope for. It's too early to know if I'll have said what I wanted to say with these books--I'll probably need decades for that to happen--but I am starting to trust Mara's story more, and myself as a writer.
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