... the perfect time to celebrate our love affair with other
worlds, a page at a time.
First of all, a big
thank you to Gill and the rest of the Novel Points Of View crew for
allowing me the limelight for a little. I love reading YA. I don’t write YA
myself, preferring the seemingly safe MG haven (far from it, I assure you!),
but I got a chance to throw myself into the YA world proper last week. Why?
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| Teri Terry in Inverness |
Because last week I was privileged to host a school and Waterstones visit from YA royalty Teri Terry,
prolific author of the acclaimed Slated/Fractured/Shattered
trilogy, Mind Games and soon to
be published Book of Lies. (As an aside, Teri Terry is her actual name
– the result of marrying a man called Mr Terry when your first name happens to
be Teresa.)
So - it’s Valentine’s
Week, and like most YA titles, there is plenty
of romance in Teri’s plots, although it rarely takes centre stage. The
nature of her psychological thrillers is that her heroines usually have other
things to worry about, such as surviving being hunted by an evil government or
figuring out their own identity in the face of danger, deception and death. Turns out that Teri writes these
kinds of stories because she relates to
them. As a child who rarely lived in one place for long, swapping countries
and schools and friends with unsettling regularity, Teri ‘gets’ tales of outsiders, identity and messy
relationships.
Anyone in that position inevitably learns to observe. It goes without saying that she loved libraries: ‘a safe place to hang
out’ whenever she was new to a school, they met her needs: an endless supply of
stories beyond The Lord of the Rings
which she re-read and re-read when young. As I write this, I have driven more
than 3 hours through sleet and snow to take my daughter to a basketball event.
I parked the car in Stenhousemuir and looked for a place to sit, to write, to
be warm. A place that wouldn’t empty my wallet. And there it was – the local
library. I love it, too.
Back to Teri. Loving
stories is one thing, but sustaining a career as a published author is
quite another. Things are going well for her at the moment: her books are
popular and she enjoys a high profile. As a result she has a little more control
over what she does next than most authors, but she concedes that these
decisions are influenced by her publisher’s views. She gave a word of warning
to aspiring young authors at the Waterstones Book Group event: ‘You really have to love your book. You’re
going to write it and edit it before sending it away. It comes back for
structural edits and copy-edits and line-by-line edits and you are going to
re-read it endlessly. Then when it finally gets published, you will spend
months and months reading it aloud and talking about it, over and over again.
I’m telling you – you’d better love it!’
As writers, maybe this is the question we should ask
ourselves when submitting to publishers and agents: do I really have a love affair with this story? Can I commit to
this tale with a contract and possibly years of my life? Is it love?
It wasn’t love at first
sight with Teri who didn’t consider writing as a career option until she
moved to the UK. Born in France, she had lived in Canada and Australia before
moving to the UK, acquiring qualifications as a lawyer, optician and
microbiologist somewhere along the way. It doesn’t matter: she is living proof
that what you have done isn’t as
important as what you do now. She
committed herself to developing her writing, producing eight other novels which
haven’t yet seen the light of day - and, in her own words, ‘some of them
shouldn’t!’ Of course, rejection is
an inevitable part of the writing life, and some young readers were shocked to
hear that even at her stage of success, Teri receives rejections. They might
come in the form of publishers not liking an idea she loves, or in the form of
a scathing review on Goodreads. You will be hurt; even heartbroken - it is
impossible to avoid - but like in any grown-up relationship, the best writers
are faithful despite their disappointments. Stick at it – perseverance pays
off.
And as Teri rolled her flowery suitcase towards the airport
terminal, and I drove away, watching her figure recede into the distance, I
reflected that behind any story you or I
love, there is a human like Teri. Someone who may blend into a crowd and yet
whose mind has gifted us those precious, precious jewels which last well beyond
a bunch of wilting roses. Lasting images,
characters who live on, indelible imprints of stories left behind on our
minds.
Behind every story there is someone like you or me. Stories
- the perfect matchmakers between readers and writers.
Now there’s a love
worth celebrating.
Barbara blogs at write4bairns.wordpress.com
