In line with this year's Manila International Book Fair (MIBF) which kickstarted on Sept. 17, National Book Store brought two of the young adult genre's best-selling authors—Jennifer E. Smith and Lissa Price—in the country.
Smith is known for her teen romance novels "The Statistical Probability of Love at First Sight," "This Is What Happy Looks Like," and "Geography of You and Me" while Price became famous for her "Starters" series ("Enders" is part two of the book.)
On the same day of MIBF's opening, Smith and Price visited International School Manila for a talk with the students. I was excited to cover the event and it was thrilling to hear these authors I have known only through their books discuss about writing and give pieces of advice to the children.
My article about it came out in Inquirer Learning last Sept. 23. To read, click the link here: Go for original stories, YA lit authors tell young writers.
Parts of the interview, I mean our backstage little chit-chat, and the talk weren't included in the article. That's why I'm putting it here in my blog to share to those Price and Smith fans out there. :)
The two authors were nice to grant me such so here it goes:
What's your process in writing a book?
Jennifer E. Smith (JS): ...I [have] a lack of process in writing. I don't write with an outline and I'm a bit of a scatterbrain. I like leaving room for surprises that's why I don't have conclusions.
Lissa Price (LP): [I do it in a] headlights way... filling in the beginning, middles, and end.
Do you write or type?
JS: My handwriting is horrible.
LP: I do both.
Can you share some writing tips?
JS: Read as much as you can so you can write as much. I wrote terrible stuff once, too.
LP: What makes your work special is you. The deeper you get inside yourself... that's what you get.
JS: Bring your own experiment to the story.
How old should you be to start writing?
LP: Age is not a factor in writing especially with the Internet...
JS: ...with Wattpad and others.
Are you afraid that the movie of your book may not be faithful to what you have written?
JS: The movies are different from the books.
How do you deal with writing stagnation?
LP: Swimming and thinking [about it] before sleeping at night.
JS: Write the scene as if it was a script or a dialogue. Then you can go back to it after an hour.
On starting stories and not finishing...
LP: I'd call this a "shiny new thing" syndrome. Write short stories to begin with. You just have to control [yourself].
JS: It's good to try sticking to something, but new ideas are also good.
How do you come up with your characters' personalities?
LP: Look at the people around you and change them. Draw from experiences.
For beginners, do you prefer first-person writing more that third-person?
LP: Go with what feels right.
JS: Push yourself and try [any].
LP: Go and write!
(To Lissa) Can you relate to Callie (Woodland, the protagonist of her book)?
LP: There's a lot of me in her—the stubbornness, especially—and that's Callie.
What are your experiences on how to end your stories?
JS: The ending is less about you and then more about the story and the character.
What are your favorite books? Current reads?
LP: We Were Liars by Emily Lockhart
JS: Stephanie Perkins' Happily Ever After series
How do you see the Filipino readers/fans so far?
JS: They're really amazing.
LP: They're super smart!
JS: They're just the most enthusiastic and passionate fans.
LP: Yes, all the tweets. I get tweets about the billboards and everything. I love it!
Most of your kids and readers are teenagers. When did you start writing yourself?
JS: Since I was kid, I didn't start writing for teens until, you know, my early 20s. It kinda clicked when I realized that some of the books that meant to me and I was passionate about were books I have read by that age. I wanted to do write the kind of books that I would have love to read then and for the kids who are similar to me at that age who are complete, always have my nose on the book. A total book nerd. That kid I wanted to write for.
LP: I've also always been writing but what [inspired me] was the Hunger Games. That just pushed me to the edge because she doesn't talk down to the reader. And that's when I realized, yes, this is what I could do. So I was reading a lot of YA and that's what got me into writing.
(To Lissa) You said a while ago that you don't like fanfictions.
LP: It's just that too many of the writers here were asking questions of them having problems with it. If somebody is enjoying their writing and enjoyed writing fanfictions, if it's working for them, then fine. But at some point they're gonna have to stop it though because they won't make money out of it. I just think that it's better that writers make up their own characters, their own stories, because then on it's theirs and they own it.
JS: I'm very out of touch of the fanfiction world and I feel like almost all I know from it came from Fangirl by Rainbow Rowell. Honestly, the first time I knew what it was was when I Googled one of my books, The Statistical Probability, then it came out. There's a lot of Statistical Probability One Direction fan fictions. I may sound so old right now but what is fan fiction? So that's how I sort of knew it but I don't have an opinion as I don't know much about it.
Writing genre, do you plan to veer away on that?
LP: I am changing it up for the next new "secret" project. I don't think [romantic novels] are my thing, probably. Like they will always be a romance or love story inside the story but it's probably not my forte so I'll leave that to people who are better at it.JS: Similar. I remember I wrote one middle-grade novel that has an elements of fantasy to it, but it's very different and it came out in a very strange way... telling somebody that I won't do three things and that's to write middle-grade, to write fantasy, and to write for boys. But for the most part I think I'll continue my books which will always be story-focused but I do really enjoy realistic contemporary fiction.
What are you working now?
JS: I just finished a book that will be out on Fall. It's titled "Hello, Goodbye, and Everything In Between."
LP: You have these great titles! And it's just so you!
JS: I know. It just came out like over a week.
LP: Did you do that yourself or?
JS: That one my editor helped me, but all my other titles have been me. This one we've been stuck for so long and for like six months we were trying to come up with the title.
LP: And how that it come to be?
JS: My editor thought of that one. She didn't like my idea. My idea was called "Here's the Amazing Thing" 'cause it's a line in the book and it sort of makes it more memorable. It's about a couple who have been together for two years and on the night they leave for college, and are going to schools on the opposite sides of the United States and they haven't decided whether or not to break up yet. So that night, their last 12 hours together, they were re-visiting all the places important to their relationship. So they're trying to decide.
LP: For me? it's possible there may be a third book for the Starters series, I haven't completely decided it yet. But it's very possible that it would happen. I'm also working on a new secret project.
What are you looking forward to in your visit here in Manila?
JS: Meeting readers. I'm so excited because we have other author friends who came here in Manila and were so excited to tell us about it and by hearing people from Twitter or e-mails, hearing from our friends how amazing and enthusiastic readers here... I can't wait to meet them. It's very exciting.
LP: Absolutely. I got tweets from [the fans] sending us billboard pictures. I mean, this is our first billboard. We're very, very excited. They're so wonderful, these fans and their tweets on how excited they are with our books and stuff. So that's really the number one thing and the next thing of course will be shopping!
JS: I'm very excited here in the Philippines because it's my first time here and my first in Asia.
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So that's it. And here's a photo of me with the Jenn and Lissa.
'Til the next adventure!
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