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Sara Zarr delivers the keynote speech to kick off the final day of the 2011 SCBWI Annual Winter Conference.
Sara is the acclaimed author of three novels for young adults: STORY OF A GIRL (National Book Award Finalist), SWEETHEARTS (Cybil Award Finalist), and ONCE WAS LOST (a Kirkus Best Book of 2009). Her fourth book will be out in late 2011. She's also written for IMAGE JOURNAL, Hunger Mountain Online, and RESPONSE MAGAZINE, as well as for several anthologies. (If you need a reading recommendation, ask Sara--she recently read over 200 books as a judge for the National Book Awards.)
Click here to read a pre-conference interview with Sara.
Sara came the the SCBWI conference as an attendee in 2001, at which she had been pursuing writing for five years and becoming frustrated. She came back in 2005 and she was really getting discouraged that things weren't happening in her career.
"They say write the book you want to read. I'm going to give the speech that I need to hear," Sara told us. "I speak to you as a colleague, comrade and friend."
The time between when you're no longer a beginner but have yet to break into the business is probably the hardest in your career, she says. Your greatest creation is your creative life. It's all in your hands. Rejection can't take it away; reviews can't take it away. The life you create for yourself as an artist, may be the only thing that's really yours. Create a life you can center yourself in calmly as you wait for you work to grow.
Here are a few some of the characters tics of a fulfilling creative life that Sara shared with us...
It's sustainable. Celebrate career milestones, but remember that they aren't the point. What's important is the love of the work. "Most creative I know don't have a retirement plan."
It invites company. Most creatives are introverts. Seek mentoring and be a mentor. Other creatives are the only ones who understands the joys and struggles of the creative life. There's never a point where you have nothing else to learn. But at the same time, don't consider hundreds of people on Twitter who you've never meant as your inner circle of friends.
It knows when to send company away. Ultimately this is about you. When it comes to getting your work done, no one can do that but you. There's power and importance to privacy. Think before sharing, name dropping. Know when to turn off Google alerts and GoodReads. "We can't let all of these voices and opinions be present in our creative moment."
It gives back. It give back to you and to others. As you're engaged with you work and your world you'll be a better spouse, friends, sibling. You'll be more self-actualized.
This month, readergirlz are discussing Sweethearts by Sara Zarr.
Read the June issue of readergirlz. There's a playlist for the book, plus book guide questions and party ideas.
Drop by the readergirlz blog to discuss the book with other readers, ALL MONTH LONG!
LIVE CHAT:
First, to celebrate the release of diva Melissa Walker's latest book, Lovestruck Summer, we'll be partying it up at the blog on Tuesday, June 9th at 6 PM PST/9 PM EST for a special chat.
And don't forget to join our hour-long chat with Sara Zarr at the readergirlz blog on Wednesday, June 17th at 6 PM PST/9 PM EST.
Roundtable Discussion
Some of the readergirlz divas and postergirlz had a great time talking together about Sweethearts. Read our roundtable discussion.
Five of us readergirlz--Little Willow, Lorie Ann Grover, Melissa Walker, Holly Cupala, and myself--chatted for awhile about this month's featured book at readergirlz, Sweethearts by Sara Zarr.
Little Willow: What words come to mind when you think of Jenna, the main character in Sweethearts?
Miss Erin: Lost, buried, caught, hidden, confused, bruised, neglected.
Melissa Walker: Hiding, scared.
Little Willow: I second "hiding" and "confused." Also: Fragile, lonely, searching, nostalgic, torn.
Holly Cupala: Questioning identity, hidden truths, self-punishment, longing for acceptance.
Lorie Ann Grover: Self-doubt, lost, confused, pained, hungry for peace and acceptance from others and herself.
Little Willow: When she slipped back into her binging habits, I wanted so badly to help her.
Lorie Ann: I know, LW! It pained me when she stole and binged. Pained me!
Holly: My heart went out to her. We've all been in places where we've felt misunderstood and helpless and have tried to soothe ourselves in unhealthy ways, whether physical or emotional. Sometimes we have to reach bottom before we can start the journey back up.
Little Willow: By the time she got to high school, Jennifer shed the weight and (some of) the shyness of her elementary school self. She also changed her name to Jenna. What did you think of her transformation?
Miss Erin: Reinventing yourself can be a good thing, but in Jennifer's case I think it was more harmful than helpful. She wasn't doing it for the right reasons, per se--she was doing it to try to run away from her past. Your past isn't something you can run away from and still be perfectly content/at peace/happy. Jenna certainly wasn't.
Melissa: I thought it was another way for her to hide from a past she was unsure about, a time that brought her pain to remember.
Lorie Ann: I have a different perspective. I admired that she redefined herself. I found her journey in Sweethearts to be about meshing the new image authentically with who she really was. And what a surprise: her authentic self was even greater than she hoped. She was liked, loved, and courageous.
Holly: She worked so hard to hide from the people who were hurting her that she also hid from herself. Most heartbreakingly, she hid her own strength. She couldn't even see it because it was wrapped up in all that pain. I admired her most when she was able to have compassion and admiration for her earlier self.
By:
Robin Brande,
on 3/17/2009
Blog:
Robin Brande
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Big, superhairy deadline in 26 days, and I’ll be spending 8 of those on the road, and 5 of those are Sundays and I don’t work on Sundays, so really I have no business being on this blog now or starting a Twitter account last weekend or playing on Facebook or reading other YA author’s [...]
Sweethearts by Sara Zarr is the story of a girl, Jennifer "Jenna" Harris, who once had a friend named Cameron Quick. They were both outcasts in elementary school-- Jennifer the fat girl, Cameron the weird boy. Then, suddenly Cameron moves away-- and Jennifer hears that he has died. Years later, Jennifer has become Jenna, a thin, popular, well-adjusted teen. She has never forgotten Cameron Quick, though, and imagine her suprise when he shows up out of the blue one day. Together, they must confront their past and their present-- and find some way to settle the "unfinished business" (as Jenna's mother calls it) between them.
As delectable as the cover looks, Sweethearts didn't quite satisfy me. There wasn't enough substance-- not much really happened. Scenes from Jenna's present life were interspersed with scenes from her past, including a particularly trumatic one that the book centers around. But, I mean... I feel callous saying this, but it just didn't seem trumatic enough. When you finally find out what happened to Jenna, it's sort of... anticlimactic. I told a librarian friend of mine this, and she said, "Yes, but that's how life is." She has a point-- life isn't always climactic. But life isn't always interesting, either.
Sweethearts is a very psycological book (there really isn't much in the way of plot). I like some books like this (Speak, for instance), but it can drag on after a while. Sweehearts didn't drag too much, but it didn't grab me and pull me in, either. It's very well-written, and makes me want to read Zarr's first book, Story of a Girl (which was nominated for the National Book Award). But Sweethearts just... wasn't my cup of tea. Or plate of cookies. Or something.
I give Sweethearts three out of five daggers.
Eating heart-shaped cookies, vaguely disappointed, and yours,
Sara Zarr's newest book, Sweethearts, is the story of how we can be marked by a person or experience and carry that forward in our lives. Also, how that experience defines us, shapes us, and continues to impact us long after we think it should be over.
It's part of the teen experience to reinvent ourselves, try on different clothes, personalities and friends. Or a time to morph into something we've never been before.
Jenna Vaughn, happy, smiling, confident, popular high school senior works very hard to project an image she has constructed for herself. What no one knows is that long ago, she was Jennifer Harris, a young girl who was as different from Jenna Vaughn as is possible to imagine. Poor, hungry, a misfit. Although she has created and lived with this new image of herself for some time, she still has to work hard at pretending that it is her real self. It is not who she feels inside. She still mourns the loss of her childhood friend Cameron. He, more than any other person in her life, including her mother, defines how she views herself. A good part of the story is how Jenna reconciles her past and present selves, and prepares herself for the future.
The catalyst for this? A young man named Cameron Quick which is a stellar name for a character. To describe Cameron and Jennifer as "childhood sweethearts" as much of the book promotion does demeans the depth and character of their relationship. As children, Cameron and Jennifer both lived in unpleasant circumstances and were the social outcasts at their elementary school. However, beyond having this in common, they had a complex and deep connection. They were each other's only friend, two halves of one person - focused on each other to the exclusion of anyone else. In fact, it comes as a surprise to both Jenna and the reader that she was unaware that Cameron had any brothers and sisters even though there were around when she knew him in elementary school.
As a teen, Jenna still mourns the loss of Cameron who she has been led to believe is dead. She always carries with her that sense that he was the very first person to see and accept who she really was. She believes that if her new friends knew about her past, they would see her differently. So, she expends a lot of energy in projecting the right image. Even with a popular boyfriend, a circle of close friends, good grades, great clothes, and a lovely home Jenna feels herself losing her grip when Cameron reappears in her life.
Cameron and Jenna navigate their reacquaintance and the emergence of the truth of what was really happening in Cameron's home with such affirmation of their deep connection that it affects Jenna's perceptions and opinions about her carefully constructed life. The realizations that each make about themselves and the different paths their lives have taken help them both reach conclusions about the kind of people they have become, where they should be headed and what they should be paying attention to.
Zarr writes in a compelling way about the interior life of teens. Jenna is a very self-reflective narrator and perceptive critic of those around her. Jenna and Cameron are struggling with issues that belie their years and should make every adult rethink their assumptions that being young is some sort of shield against the emotional riptides of life. The profound loss of Cameron shapes Jenna's life. His cherished memories of her lead Cameron to find and reconnect with her when he is old enough to leave his home. For him, his friend Jennifer has literally been the light in his continuing darkness.
The story's ending is in keeping with the many layered emotional landscape that the author has drawn for us. Sweethearts is difficult to read at times. It is painful to see children treated cruelly and having to live and relive those experiences. Sweethearts is not a light and frothy book, but in the end, it is a hopeful story and well worth reading.
Funny things happen sometimes. A few weeks ago, I received an email asking if I'd like to review Sara Zarr's new book SWEETHEARTS. Sure! I loved STORY OF A GIRL, and well, there's the whole pink cookie on the cover thing. I loved the book and jumped at the chance to host a stop on Sara's blog tour. We emailed back and forth a few times but needed to wrap things up before last weekend because Sara and I were both going to be traveling. When all was said and done, I sent Sara a link to my blog so she'd be able to see today's interview. She emailed back. Turns out we were headed out of town for the same writing retreat, so we could have done the interview in person. I got to spend a little time with Sara at the retreat, and she's just the kind, funny, down-to-earth person I had imagined. I love it when that happens.
I teach 7th grade English Language Arts, and I was reading SWEETHEARTS during independent reading time with my kids one day. One of my students stopped by my desk at the end of the period. "Are you going to finish that today? And can I borrow it?" Becky devoured the book in a couple days and was excited to hear that Sara would be stopping by my blog. She handed me a list of questions the next day, so this interview is our joint effort!
Welcome, Sara! First, let’s talk about the new book. What was the inspiration for this story, the spark that made you want to write about Jenna and Cameron?
I knew this boy in grade school, Mark. Like Cameron, he left a ring and a note in my lunch one day, and I remember sitting in the back of my friend’s mom’s car and discovering it and thinking, wow, there’s this person who likes me and thinks about me. Our relationship wasn’t like Cameron and Jenna’s, but for me it was like I carried around this secret---that someone cared about me and was on my side, and that meant a lot and stayed with me my whole life. Mark got back in touch when we were adults, and I started playing around with the “what if we’d known each other in high school?” question. The story went from there.
Often, authors will say that characters are made up of bits and pieces of people they know or people they’ve been. Where did Jenna and Cameron come from?
Cameron was definitely inspired by Mark, though the details about his life and his family are a total fabrication. I didn’t know him between the ages of 8 and 30, so I had to imagine him as a teenager. Jennifer, before she became Jenna, draws some on my own life. I stole and used food the way she does, and I was one of the “poor kids” who always wore hand-me-downs and got the subsidized milk, though I was not as much of an outsider as Jennifer. Jenna as a teen is a lot different than I was; I do relate to her fear of being found out for who she really is, but I think everyone feels that deep down to some extent.
SWEETHEARTS seems like a perfect title for this book. Did you know while you were writing what the title would be, or did you play around with different titles along the way? (And if you did, would you share some of them?)
The title actually came early on and I never had any other ideas. I remember emailing my agent and asking, “What do you think of SWEETHEARTS as a title?” He was lukewarm at first (he may deny it now, but I have the email evidence!). I always thought it was perfect, myself. I’ve never had a title come so easily.
I can’t imagine anyone has looked at SWEETHEARTS without commenting on the cover (and getting hungry!). Is that what you envisioned for a cover when you wrote the book, or were you surprised?
I was completely surprised. I didn’t have any idea what to expect---I’m terrible with design stuff. When I first saw it, I thought it was so literal…a sweet heart. The more I looked at it---the bite out of the cookie, the crumbs, the starkness of the background and the childlike font of the title---the more I appreciated the genius of designer Alison Impey. It’s actually kind of a masterpiece!
Becky wants to know if there’s going to be another story about Jenna and Cameron (and when Molly finishes, she’s going to want to know, too). Any plans for a sequel, or do you feel like their journey is over for now?
I have no plans for a sequel, though I’m always delighted when readers ask that question because it means the characters live on in their minds. People have also asked for a sequel to my first book, so maybe I should figure out a way for Deanna, Jenna, Cameron, Jason and Tommy to all meet up in some epic vampire fantasy…
Writers often talk about the pressure of a second book and wanting it to be better than the first. Since your first novel, STORY OF A GIRL, was a National Book Award Finalist, do you feel like that created extra pressure for you?
Absolutely. Thankfully, SWEETHEARTS was done well ahead of the National Book Award stuff, but even before that I was suffering from a major case of Second Book Psychosis. It really wasn’t based in reality, just a crazy mental battle. Honestly, there was one day that involved me curled in a ball on the kitchen floor, crying and praying and figuring out how to break the news to my agent that everyone would soon discover that I was a total fraud.
Were there any parts of writing SWEETHEARTS that were a real struggle for you?
As you can imagine, it was hard to write the scenes in Cameron’s childhood home, with his dad. It made me sick to my stomach, literally. And I’ve read books in which so much worse happens to the characters…I don’t know how those authors do it. It was hard to balance making the situation menacing enough to be scarring, but still get them out before anything worse happened.
You recently sold your next two novels. What can you tell us about those?
Not much! All I can say right now about the one I’m working on is that it involves a pastor’s daughter. I grew up in church and have always wanted to explore church life more directly in a novel. It’s too soon to talk about much else.
When and where do you most often like to write?
Whenever and wherever. My work habits aren’t anything to brag about--it’s always a struggle to get going. Every day I’m afraid. Every day I feel like I don’t know what I’m doing. So I avoid it. Time and location don’t matter to me much, as long as I do the work.
Do you have a favorite revision strategy?
Get editorial letter. Cry. Rage. Cry. Complain. Freak out. Wonder how I’ve fooled so many for so long. Cry some more. When that stage is over, I like to have a printout of the manuscript and start a new Word document rather than edit on screen and cut and paste. Even if I end up typing the same pages over and over, there’s something about the physical act of typing that helps.
And last but not least... In honor of that delicious cover, what’s your favorite kind of cookie?
A big, soft, homemade chocolate chip cookie with no nuts.
Thanks so much for stopping by, Sara!
SWEETHEARTS has an official February 1st release date but has already started showing up in bookstores. Just look for that pink cookie on the cover.
Jennifer Harris used to be that poor, chubby kid who sat alone in the cafeteria. Well, almost alone. There was Cameron Quick, another social outcast. Another kid living in poverty and living on the fringe of third grade society. He was her only friend and the only person who ever understood Jennifer Harris. And then he disappeared.
Years pass. Jennifer gets a new stepfather, a new house, a new school, a new name, a new life. She reinvents herself as Jenna Vaughn. Jenna Vaughn is one of the pretty, thin popular girls. She has friends and a hot boyfriend. But she also has a secret – a dark memory that ties her forever to Cameron Quick and to the old Jennifer Harris, who never really left. SWEETHEARTS is the story of Cameron’s return to Jennifer’s life and what happens when her two worlds meet.
As a National Book Award Finalist, Sara Zarr has a lot riding on this next novel, scheduled for release in February 2008. There will be inevitable comparisons to STORY OF A GIRL. Can this second book live up to that standard? Truth be told, I liked SWEETHEARTS even better. The characters in this novel absolutely shine, from the insecure third grade Jennifer and the third grade Cameron whose generosity and fierce loyalty made me want him for a friend, to the high school version of these kids, still haunted by their grade school selves. The minor characters shine, too. One of my favorites was Jenna’s stepfather, whose quiet support helps Jenna and her mother rebuild what was broken so many years ago.
Some character-driven novels sacrifice pace and tension, but that’s not the case with SWEETHEARTS. From the very first chapter, readers sense there’s a story from Jennifer’s childhood that’s not being told in its entirety. Zarr reveals that story in bits and pieces, snippets of memory and elegantly woven flashbacks throughout the book. All the while, the parts of the story left unspoken create powerful tension.
I read SWEETHEARTS in just a few sittings. When I was away from the book, I spent half my time thinking about the characters and hoping things would go well for them. They grow on you like that. Sara Zarr has written another fantastic novel –- one that celebrates the power of childhood friendships, loyalty, and inner strength. Like STORY OF A GIRL, Zarr's new release is loaded with realistic characters, hope, and heart. The fabulous cookie cover art delivers on its promise – SWEETHEARTS an absolutely delicious read.
I was happy to see Debbie Reese confirm my impression of American Girl World as hostile territory. Why people continue to see this empire as good for children is beyond me. If you want to educate your children into the joys of brand loyalty and conspicuous consumption, at least Disney is more affordable. And the catalog? Yup, still porn.
SLJ, I love you. I happily worked with Lillian Gerhardt and Trev Jones for years, and I did some of my best writing in your pages. And Little, Brown, too, where I published my sole book for young people and whose upcoming offerings include the extremely terrific The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian by Sherman Alexie. Smooches to you both.
So my decision to no longer visit or link to anything on your websites is not personal. It's because of that fucking ad for some LB fantasy novel bouncing all over the SLJ site and ravaging my nerves. It will not be gotten rid of. It follows you as you try to scroll down the page. The whole page quivers with its movement. I am not at all opposed to nice, polite blog ads that stay in the margins where they belong. But advertising via animated stalking is really beneath both of you. I suppose valiant VOYA, whose name is the most persistent image in the ad (not exactly what LB had in mind, I'm sure, and it can't make SLJ happy, either) is the real winner here, but it's hard not to include them in my resentment, too. VOYA, however, is worth a link, and the only thing that bounces over there is the prose.
We saw one of my favorite operas on Sunday, Bizet's The Pearl Fishers, premiered in 1863 and putatively set in Ceylon. Its big tune, a duet for tenor and baritone, is apparently England's perennial number one favorite. The Opera Boston production we saw played the Orientalism up to the hilt, with shadow puppets, projections of many-handed (I'm guessing) Hindu gods, and sinuous dancing girls. I'm guessing it was no more "authentic" than the opera itself, which shamelessly indulges itself and the audience in exotica.
It made me remember a sumptuous picture book edition of Aida by Leontyne Price and the Dillons, trumpeted by the publisher as a retelling, via Verdi, as an African story. Nope, pure Italiano, based on a scenario by a French Egyptologist. And Turandot is about as Chinese as I am. These operas make me think about our own field's stern requirements for cultural authenticity and against Orientalism. Bizet, Verdi, and Puccini would be banished from the shelves. I guess I should be grateful they are operas, not books, and thus subjected to grown-up criteria that acknowledge the presence and even perniciousness of stereotyping without making it the trump card of evaluation.
What with avoiding writing and having a cold and pissing off bloggers left and right and all, I've been spending the last couple of days looking at a lot of book blogs. Many of them feature sidebar ads from Amazon.com, and while I have no problem with that, I've noticed that the books featured therein are based on the stuff I've been looking up at Amazon, not on the content of the blog I'm looking at. I assumed children's book blogs would have ads for children's books, but I keep seeing ads for Leon Uris's Trinity--and I was researching his Exodus the other day. It reminds me of my favorite book review line: "This book follows Linda, a sixteen-year-old stalking victim."
How long, asked George and Ira, has this been going on?
Actually, this is a photograph Lolly Robinson took of our "no shelf," the place where not-reviewed materials land. It's an old photo; the no shelf now retains some semblance of order despite its persistent spiritual kinship with the Island of Misfit Toys.
I've been taking this singing class--oh, let's just get it all the gay out there and say I've been taking this cabaret singing class, and at each session we begin with vocal warm-ups and some kind of improvisational exercise. Last night one of the members, a teacher, suggested a game of assassin, saying she played it with her students. The Wikipedia description linked above seems far more elaborate than what we played, which involved sitting in a circle with our eyes closed, and somebody tapping selected members on the head to designate them as assassins or victims. Then we would open our eyes and--well, I still can't figure out what was going on, with people asking each other random questions about daylight savings time until somebody either fell over in a dramatic "death" or somebody pointed a finger at somebody else saying "You're the assassin!" I felt like a visitor from another planet, as everyone else seemed to get right into the spirit of things while I sat clueless and In Hell. Can anyone explain?
I guess kids smarter than I could have a great time with this, but I kept thinking about what a handy vehicle it could be for playground victimization. (All together, sing: "Memories / light the corners of my mind . . . .") Better even than dodgeball, because Assassin seems to offer far more interesting opportunities for psychological torture. I guess any game that involves someone being it has that potential.
On a book-related note (heh), I was able to help another student who has a young child living temporarily in the Philippines and was trying to solve the problem of intercontinental bedtime stories. I suggested using the International Children's Digital Library, where electronic editions of books from around the world can be read in a variety of ways. I didn't know if it could work synchronously, but Jeff told me that he and his kid were able to log on at the same time and turn the pages together while talking on the phone. (I guess that should really be "turn" the "pages" "together.") All very Jetsons, yes?
One last thing: being in that class reminds me what a salutary experience it is for those of us who teach to be the student once in a while. You can forget how things look from that end.
Thank you so much, Sara Zarr! I'm exactly nine years into my career, as you were in 2005, and have yet to get a book published. It's very reassuring to know I'm not alone, that this really is the hardest and most frustrating part, and that there may be success around the corner. This is exactly what I needed to hear right now, so thank you.
This is so wonderful to be able to read about the conference...feeling a little more connected and a little less sad that I'm not there. Thanks for sharing the reality of discouragement. I had one book published in 2008, and I experience the ups and downs of the publishing world as I continue to submit. But we must hang in there and hang on to our craft. This blog is great. Thanks!
Thank you so much for this talk. This is definitely the hardest stage to be in, and it's also the group that gets addressed the least. (Most workshops/conferences/organizations/books address the beginner--but what to do AFTER that? And how to grow and not get discouraged?) Thanks so much for talking about this!!
Sara's presentation was one of the best parts of the conference. Any chance we'll be able to read the entire transcript online?? Or in the SCBWI bulletin? She was so inspiring and really understood the journey we all are on.
Thank Heavens for the SCBWI blog! I missed the start of Sara Zarr's speech, but you guys filled me in.
Wasn't Sara's keynote amazing? I so identified with everything she said. Toby - I tried to take copious notes and blogged as thoroughly as I could given my slow typing - it's on my blog, Notes from the Slushpile
Very wise words. And count me among the people who would like to be able to read a transcript of Sara Zarr's entire speech.
Thanks, Candy! I'll take a look now.
I loved Sara's keynote speech, she share the real everyday life of and artist who knows and love herself. I am going to read her books.