My first job is to write the characters as full and authentic people as well as I can.
— Sara Zarr
Is it good, bad, or neutral to recognize thematic patterns in your own work? When it comes to recurring themes, I'm of the mind that knowledge is probably not power, at least in terms of the work.
I always felt that church is where I'm going to find my community and people to live my life with.
I don't want to pretend like I'm some intellectual person who understands Flannery O'Connor.
My parents met in music school, and my father was a music professor and conductor. Growing up, we always had classical and contemporary music playing.
I'm so focused on trying to craft the story that I'm in my own little world with it and that process. The one reader I'm trying to please as I write is me, and I'm pretty difficult to please.
I do have a little bit more confidence in - or at least familiarity with - my process. For example, when it feels like it's going badly or that I'm lost, I know I'll eventually find my way because I've been through it before. But writing itself is still hard.
I remember being in high school and listening to Vivaldi's 'Winter' and being so overwhelmed with emotion.
Family or love or romance, whatever it is, is not restricted to perfect people. If it were, it wouldn't exist. All of that comes out in my work in some way.
I wanted to be free to write the way I wanted to write, and my impression of Christian publishing, at least in fiction, was that there wasn't room for what I wanted to write.
I'm not really a plot writer - I'm more interested in the characters and sort of small events that propel the story forward.
I didn't 'decide' to write YA, per se. But every time I thought of a story, it featured characters 15, 16, 17.
We write in ways that, we generally hope, reflect real life, or at least look familiar to humans. And in life, recurring themes are a recurring theme. We never quite conquer a pet vice or a relationship pattern or a communication habit. We're haunted by our particular demons.
I tend to describe recurring themes as being part of a writer's DNA - something so deeply embedded in us that even we don't notice it until we've written three or four books.
I grew up in San Francisco in the 1970s. We were part of a church that belonged to the California Jesus movement.
My first published book, 'Story of a Girl', was the fourth book I wrote.
When a young reader tells you that they'd never finished a book outside of school until they read yours, or that they really needed to hear something that one of your characters says or thinks... that's just rewarding and humbling.
The one reader I'm trying to please as I write is me, and I'm pretty difficult to please.
My books have been translated into various languages and sold in other countries, but I never have any contact with the foreign publishers and am so disconnected from that process that it seems almost imaginary. With 'How to Save a Life', I worked closely with Usborne editors and have been involved in the publicity.
I don't like to do too much psychological research because it might turn a character into a patchwork.
I'm always in a place that is sincere but conflicted about different things that come with being a Christian and being an active, churchgoing Christian.
Everyone has an identity crisis when they are 16 or 17 years old.
I have no desire to go back to San Francisco.
I was a 'learn by doing' writer - I never took any formal writing classes. So it took a long time to figure things out and find my voice.
Readers want a story, not a pattern. It's the specifics of a story that make it really ping our various reader radars.
Making lists of favorite things is, for me, a task ridden with anxiety. What if I've accidentally excluded something I love? What if I discover something new tomorrow that I love even more?
When my characters are questioning things, it's not me leading up to an answer; it's me asking those same questions and letting the characters' lives unfold and seeing where it takes them.
I played the clarinet, and my sister played the violin... If we'd had the discipline and the passion, maybe we could have been good.
The characters are whole, real people to me that I'm getting to know, and since real people are all flawed, so are my characters, I hope.
When the reader and one narrator know something the other narrator does not, the opportunities for suspense and plot development and the shifting of reader sympathies get really interesting.
My books usually end where they began. I try to bring characters back to a point that is familiar but different because of the growth that they have gone through.
My parents met in music school and my father was a music professor and conductor. Growing up, we always had classical and contemporary music playing. There was a lot of Mozart and the Beatles.
One of my favorite authors is Robert Cormier. He was a devout Catholic and a very nice man, which might not be the impression you get from reading his books.
I wouldn't say I'm stuck in my adolescence, but I think, like a lot of people, I carry my teen years with me. I feel really in touch with those feelings, and how intense and complicated life seems in those years.
There were about ten years of trying, failing, trying again, suffering rejection, etc. My first published book, 'Story of a Girl', was the fourth book I wrote.
It's hard to say when my interest in writing began, or how. My mother read to my sister and me every night, and we always loved playing make-believe games. I had a well-primed imagination. I didn't start thinking about writing as a serious pursuit, a career I could have, until after college.
