For the fifth of the Writers on the Rise interviews, here’s Shana Silver! Check out her blog here and her website here. Please comment if you enjoyed reading this interview, as well as if you have requests for future questions.
Hello, Shana! Can you tell us a little about yourself?
I’m 27 years old and live just outside NYC with my boyfriend of 5 1/2 years. Hopefully his title will soon be replaced with “fiance.” He is very awesome because he ignores me and lets me write instead of pay attention to him. In turn, I let him watch sports. It’s a great compromise.
When not writing, I’m a freelance computer animator. I’ve worked on a variety of things you’ve probably seen. I designed/animated the graphics for CBS Sports, the USA Network, truTV. I also did a lot of work on the cg animated The Barbie Diaries. Plus a ton of commercials. I invade your TV and you don’t even know it.
I know a lot of authors who have creative pursuits other than writing. Would you say your work in animation has influenced your writing, or vice versa?
There are parts of my animation job that help me with writing, but it’s probably not the kind you would think. Mainly, in the day job I’m always working with clients who require several rounds of revisions. Often times, I don’t agree with their suggestions, and yet, I have no choice. If I don’t make the changes, I’ll be fired. Still, there are ways to make it your own and feel proud of a direction you may not have taken the work otherwise. Sometimes we have to start from scratch on a project we worked hard on. Other times there may be multiple companies vying for the same job, and we have to pitch several ideas in hopes the client will choose one of ours and hire us. All this stuff really helps with my writing. I tend to look at revisions objectively, not subjectively because of this. And the pitches help me look at a single project in a variety of ways, coming up with different angles to tackle it, until I get the version that works.
Also, I’ve always been an artist and a writer my whole life. I’m not sure I can be happy with one and not the other. I find if I get into a freelance slump where I go a while without any gigs, my writing suffers as well. I miss the art stuff and that ends up seeping into my writing. I do think outletting my creativity in two different formats helps me not to get burnt out.
What are you currently writing?
I have two WIPs I’m working on right now. My agent wants me to keep the premises of them under wraps until they go on submission. I will say that my main project is contemporary YA and loosely based off a classic story that hasn’t been re-told yet. It’s humorous, has a fun romance, and I had a blast writing the first draft. My agent is very excited about it and eager to get a draft in her hands. I am working on making this happen. I have a complete but messy first draft awaiting revisions and polishing.
The other one is also contemporary YA, though it’s controversial, a little darker and more literary. It’s high-concept and will appeal to fans of books like Speak, Dreamland, Looking for Alaska, Story of a Girl, etc. This one I’m just playing around with while I let the other one sit so I can tackle revisions with fresh eyes and a concrete plan.
Do you work on multiple projects at the same time? I have several novels in progress right now, and I find it productive, though a little distracting, to switch between them. How does this work for you?
This is another thing I get from the day job. At work, I’m always switching between multiple projects. They’re each like another world with all new styles, designs, animation techniques, etc. Like different books and characters. I’ve trained myself to switch between them and only take a minute or two to reorient myself in the new project.
Because of this, I don’t find it difficult to switch between writing projects, and I often work on more than one at a time. If I get stuck on one, I just pick up another. I can also force my brain to think about a certain project, so sometimes I’ll be mulling over revisions for one book while I’m writing brand new scenes in another. I know this doesn’t work for everyone, and I’m not sure I could do it as easily if I didn’t have to in the day job. I do prefer to revise linearly on one book straight through from beginning to the end before I switch to the next, but it doesn’t always work out that way.
What else have you written?
My novel on submission is called The Art of Selling My Sister and it’s about a girl who ruins her older sister’s life by destroying her chances at a college dance scholarship, and then must fix things before their parents find out.
I also have another manuscript with my agent, waiting it’s turn. Rhythm & Clues is about a free-spirit girl with an unconventional home life, who convinces her sheltered best friend to rebel against his overprotective parents. But he takes her advice too far and runs away with a dangerous crowd. Feeling responsible, she sets out to find him.
Finally, I have a trunk novel as well. I queried this one in 2006, and though I had a high request rate, ultimately the manuscript couldn’t get me an agent. I kept getting the same rejection: too edgy for YA, too juvenile for adult. The real issue was the college setting, and there was no way to revise it in one direction or the other, so I shelved it. It was about a girl who concocts a string of lies to weasel her way into a popular sorority, and then to keep up the facade, she indulges too far in the world of partying and binge drinking. Her actions result in the sorority being shut down, and she’s left to pick up the pieces. Even the title was too edgy: Premature Evacuation.
My newest novel, Unseen, also takes place in college, and I have heard that college in young adult fiction can be a hard sell. What do you think?
I don’t think it’s impossible, but I do think it limits your options. I know when I queried my college book, a lot of agents were deterred by the college setting because it automatically made the book hard to sell. Still, I got requests, so they were obviously willing to at least take a chance and see. The edginess factor in mine hindered it too much. I did a lot of research at the time to find college-set novels that weren’t part of a series where the characters started out in high school. I found a lot more books shelved in the literary section (I Am Charlotte Simmons by Tom Wolfe, Rules of Attraction by Bret Easton Ellis) than those shelved in the YA section (Reality Chick by Lauren Barnholdt). My book straddled both genres, literary writing with a YA style plot. It didn’t really work.
I think the real issue with college books being a hard sell is the lack of target audience. I think high school aged teens can’t relate to college books because the concept and subject matter is too foreign for them. Or they’ve already branched out into adult books. Adults are already over it by the time they graduate, they want to read about people their own age. And college kids are too busy studying or partying to read. Obviously I’m stereotyping here and there are exceptions to every rule–I’m sure most writers were avid readers in college like me–but I think the majority of people do fall into this category.
That being said, I do think it’s possible to sell a college aged book. I think it helps if you have an established readership, which I think you’ll easily gain with your debut! I also would err on the side of tame rather than edgy. I do think the edgy factor combined with the college setting made mine too hard to sell, plus the muddled genre, but I wonder if I would have had an easier time if I kept it a bit more sugarcoated.
Where are you at on your path to publication?
I have an agent who I absolutely adore, and The Art of Selling My Sister is out on submission. So I’m just waiting right now, trying not to check my email every 2 seconds, and distracting myself with writing.
I know what you mean about obsessively checking email in the hope of good news, or any news. How do you balance selling your work with actually writing it? Does business ever get in the way of creativity?
At the moment, I don’t think it interferes with my writing. The selling part is currently out of my hands. I did my job, wrote the best book I could write, and now it’s in the capable hands of my agent. I guess the selling part really came when querying, but while I queried one book, I focused on another WIP so I had something to distract me. I think that’s the best thing you can do while trying to sell one book–work on something else. The only thing I really sacrificed was the time it took to write the query and send it out. But on the other hand, that was time well spent.
Sometimes I do get antsy waiting for news on my book on submission, but then I think about how enthusiastic my agent is about me and my future books and that really motivates me during times I feel frustrated by all the waiting.
And though my goal is obviously to sell the books I write, I also just enjoy writing them. I don’t want to lose sight of this. I think it’s so so important to always enjoy it. And I know I couldn’t ever give up writing even if I’m the only person who ever reads my stuff. I love it, and I think that’s the part that helps me focus while trying to dive into the business-y stuff.
What advice do you have for writers?
Oh, where to begin? I’ve posted a lot about my love for outlines on my blog, so I’ll talk about something different here.
The thing that helped me the most with my writing was learning to master pitches and query letters. I started understanding hooks and what’s high-concept and which ideas were worth working on and which I should ignore. There’s an art to condensing an entire manuscript into such a small format while still keeping the reader’s attention, and I think being able to do that leads to tighter manuscripts as well when you practice the conservation of words. When I first started writing queries, I sucked. But then I practiced loglines. I read the PM deals and kept a list of which hooked me and which didn’t. I started analyzing why. I took current books and movies and figured out their loglines. Eventually I expanded to pitches and full paragraphs. I wrote a lot of pitches for ideas that I never worked on. So everyone dreads writing queries, and now they are my favorite thing. Too bad I don’t have to do it anymore! But I still reap the benefits. My first drafts are usually too long, and so studying how to condense turned a weakness into a strength.
What is your understanding of “high-concept” fiction? It took me some time to figure out this term, and I still see debates about its definition.
My definition of high-concept is being able to pitch the work in a short, hooky sentence that makes the person you’re telling the idea to say, “Oooh! I want to read that!” They need to immediately understand the premise and be intrigued by it. It’s something that immediately gives you a sense of conflict, what the stakes are, and still feels fresh and unique. Also, I once read this somewhere but I can’t remember where so apologies for the lack of source credit, but one of the best definitions I ever saw is that high-concept plot descriptions avoid certain weak verbs. If you have to say “struggles” or “deals with” as your main verb, it’s probably not high concept. I think that makes a lot of sense. Because those kind of verbs don’t hint at what’s at stake, and I think high-concept needs to.
If you’re unsure of the definition, I think the best way to understand it is to start reading the deal postings on Publisher’s Marketplace and make notes when a posting hooks you and makes you wish that book was already on your TBR shelf. Then you can ask yourself, what about it hooked you? Another method is to take books you have already read that you did not write and try to figure out their logline. If it’s too difficult to pair down into a single, hooky sentence, that book might not be high-concept. Even the 500+ page Twilight book can be broken down into a few words (teen girl falls in love with a vampire who wants to kill her). That one is interesting, I just realized, because I bet if you tried to tell Edward’s story in a logline, you’d have to resort to a “struggles” type verb. (Vampire struggles to suppress his desire to kill the human he loves). However, both of those show you the conflict (forbidden love), what’s at stake (her life), and the unique aspect (Romeo and Juliet with vampires).
That being said, you can most likely describe any book into a single sentence. The key is that it’s a hooky sentence that immediately lets you know what the story is about.
What are your inspirations?
Though I didn’t know what to call it at the time, I think the voice from the narration of My So-Called Life is the thing that initially made me want to be a writer. Now, I wrote stories way before this, but Angela’s voice spoke to me because of it’s raw emotion. I didn’t want to just tell stories anymore, I wanted to affect the reader, grab hold of them, and keep holding even 14 years later. More recently, my influences are Margaret Atwood, Sarah Dessen, Laurie Halse Anderson, Maureen Johnson, and though my books are nothing like his, I love Chuck Palahniuk’s voice.
I’m also influenced by 90s alternative music because it brings me back to the nostalgia of my own high school experiences and gets me in the mindset to write YA.
What has been the best part of writing?
My favorite part of writing is probably revising. Knowing you have a complete story that has problems and being able to see how to change them. I love the revelation moment when it all clicks and suddenly everything makes sense. The plan is there, you just have to execute it. And then the feeling of accomplishment when those changes work. I know, I’m weird, I like revising and query writing. I actually don’t like first drafting. The blank page scares me. So I try to bang it out as fast as I can just so I can slip into the comfort of revising.
And what has been the worst part?
Oops, I put that above. I find first drafting more difficult than anything else. I often try to trick myself so I don’t even know I’m first drafting. I create meticulous outlines, really detailed, sometimes with dialogue and description. My last outline was 18k. So when it came time to write the first draft, I’d already done the hard part, I just had to flesh it out. I’m not a fly-by-the-seat-of-your-pants writer. So writing without a plan makes me too nervous.
Where do you hope do be in a year?
Well, I hope to have a book deal for sure. And if that happens, I’d like to have a brilliant marketing plan I’ve already started implementing. You know, the usual…
And here’s a teaser from Shana’s The Art of Selling My Sister:
Three months, twelve days, and fifteen hours had passed since I ruined my sister’s life. I’d spent all one hundred thousand minutes since trying to make it up to her. Well, okay, I wasted some of those minutes sleeping. And I never really thought about her while showering or using the toilet because that’s just weird.
Presents didn’t work. The one thing Lara wanted couldn’t be bought. Apologies lost their meaning when I chanted them over and over, and she learned to tune me out. I even got a summer job and gave her all my earnings. I knew it was my fault she couldn’t dance anymore with her hip injury, and I figured I could at least try to pay for her physical therapy. But that backfired when she returned the money, claiming she didn’t want to owe me any debt. That was the last time she actually spoke to me on her own volition. At home, she went out of her way to avoid me, spending less time at the house each day.
I was about to give up and embrace the title of disowned sister like Lara so readily wanted me to wear. But today when I began my first day of 12th grade, a marketing assignment offered me the opportunity to confess my shameful actions against Lara while simultaneously giving her the one thing she still craved: the chance to be a star. I hoped this was what I needed to win Lara’s forgiveness. Maybe even rekindle our friendship.
The bell for last period sounded, and students shuffled into the hallway, gabbing about their new teachers and regaling each other with stories about exciting summers. I rushed down the hallway to the school newspaper meeting. In order to help Lara, I’d have to give up my spot on the swim team and join the newspaper staff instead. The meeting times for both organizations conflicted. I figured it was only fair. An eye for an eye. Or rather, an inability to dance in exchange for a relinquished cherished pastime.
Getting on newspaper wouldn’t be easy. I’d have to turn on the charm. I pushed open the door to the media classroom where Lonnie Weitzman, newly crowned editor-in-chief, stood in front of a desk, humming to himself.
“Kasey?”
I obviously took him by surprise because his small eyes opened as wide as possible, and he dropped the papers he was holding. His curly locks bounced as he bent underneath a desk to retrieve them.
I crouched beside him. He met my eyes, smiled, and bumped his head on the underside of the desk. He rubbed his head while I picked up the remaining papers and handed them back to him.
Lonnie fanned through the pages, looking hard at the numbers in the corners, pulling out various sheets and slipping them in between others. He moved at blink-and-you’ll-miss-it speed.
“It makes for a more interesting read all out of order,” I said. “Consider it a favor.”
He snorted a laugh. I placed my palm on his shoulder, ready to use that laugh to my advantage, but he flinched and stared at his papers, the pages vibrating in his shaky hands.
My smile wavered. My plan was to win him over with humor, but maybe I’d used too much. I didn’t mean to give him the wrong idea.
