Patrick Brown
asked
Katie Coyle:
Did you workshop your debut novel (Vivian Versus the Apocalypse) while you were getting your MFA? If so, was there any tension about you writing a YA novel in an MFA workshop? Did you even know it was a YA novel? Am I just rambling now?
Katie Coyle
You are not rambling. I always knew VIVIAN was a YA novel, but I actually started writing it about a week after graduating my MFA program.
I did write and workshop almost exclusively stories about teenage girls & magic in my program, though. No one explicitly said, "Please stop doing this," but no one explicitly said, "Please keep doing this," either. A few people got what I was trying to do, and a few people thought I was a talentless hack, which is pretty par for the course for anyone in a writing workshop. However, one time at a reading I told the assembled crowd that my manuscript was a collection about teen girls & magic, and a guy shouted out, "It's called TWILIGHT!" Everyone laughed. I had to laugh, too, but only because I couldn't do what I wanted to do, which was breathe fire. I have a dream that wherever that guy is now, he will find himself walking through a bookstore in January 2015 and a large display of the hardcover US edition of my book, VIVIAN APPLE AT THE END OF THE WORLD, will collapse and bury him. Teens 4ever!!!
I did write and workshop almost exclusively stories about teenage girls & magic in my program, though. No one explicitly said, "Please stop doing this," but no one explicitly said, "Please keep doing this," either. A few people got what I was trying to do, and a few people thought I was a talentless hack, which is pretty par for the course for anyone in a writing workshop. However, one time at a reading I told the assembled crowd that my manuscript was a collection about teen girls & magic, and a guy shouted out, "It's called TWILIGHT!" Everyone laughed. I had to laugh, too, but only because I couldn't do what I wanted to do, which was breathe fire. I have a dream that wherever that guy is now, he will find himself walking through a bookstore in January 2015 and a large display of the hardcover US edition of my book, VIVIAN APPLE AT THE END OF THE WORLD, will collapse and bury him. Teens 4ever!!!
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