What makes you want to write?
TEEN HUMOR
“Funny” is the word that has come up in every review, so far. I
wish I could take credit. The truth is that there is something about being a teenager
which just makes people plain smarter and funnier than adults. Maybe it’s because
this is when we’re looking around really hard, thinking really hard about who we are, what we want to be, and what inspires us. Great
humor is in the details, and no one notices the details more than teenagers.
The stuff people find funniest in the book is mostly just straight out of my journals.
I like to write down some of the great things they say. I
once asked my juniors to write an essay comparing an author to someone noteworthy. One
student turned in a paper he called:
“Hemingway and my Noteworthy Uncle Thad--What a Couple of Drunks”
Later in that same school year, a student turned in something she called,
“Some articles who think Huck Finn is gay”
These might be the 8 funniest words ever written. It’s
amazing how many things are communicated in those eight words. It’s a title that
says “Mr. Moser, I am more bored by this assignment than any assignment anyone has ever given me. In
the history of education, the boredom I’m feeling right now is unsurpassed at any time, on any continent. Please,
next time you’re thinking about assigning something this boring, just don’t. Rather,
pick up something heavy and hit me in the head. Please.”
While reading Lord of the Flies,
one of my all time favorite kids told me, “If William Golding were a dinosaur, he would be a Boring-o-saurus.” Then
his
friend across the room one-ups him, by saying, “No, this book is so
bad, William Golding would be a Boring-o-saurus REX—the apex predator of
all other Boring-o-saurs.”
OK, so I’m a writer, I try to be clever and all that, right? I
have NEVER written anything that funny in my life. Even if I’m able to pull off
my dream of making Chasing Prophecy a best-seller, I can never stop teaching
because I would run out of material for dialogue. When you’re loving the way my
characters talk to each other, I’ll take credit for the punctuation and that’s about it.
STRENGTH
I’ve spent the last few years working with high school students
who have mild to moderate reading disabilities. I’ve been really inspired by how
hard these kids fight to improve their reading. For struggling learners it’s really
important to have an interesting story—even more important than it is for adults. There’s
so much extra work that goes into reading for some kids that they have a much lower threshold for boredom. One
of my main tasks was to make this interesting enough for adults, but easy enough for struggling readers. So
far, people think I pulled it off.
I’ve talked about monsters a lot while promoting this book and people think I’m just talking about the bad guys or Bigfoot.
Really, what I’m talking about are obstacles for teens to overcome. Sometimes
these monsters are reading disabilities. Sometimes the monsters are abusive home
lives. Sometimes the monsters are their own fears, self-doubts, and insecurities.
Sometimes these monsters are drug addiction or alcohol. I’ve
been so inspired by watching kids stare down all kinds of beasts. I wanted to create
characters as strong and courageous as my own students.
BIGFOOT
Beyond the symbolic, I’ve always been fascinated by plain old scary monsters with big teeth.
I’m especially into the ones we only see in glimpses and therefore make bigger in our imaginations.
So of course my all time fave book character is Boo Radley from To Kill a Mockingbird.
My Boo Radley is our own Seattle-area legend of Sasquatch. I
can’t say much more about that without spoiling the best scenes in the book. I’ll
just say that my own experience with him is through two of my students who went looking for him for a class project. They
either
found him, or they found something that looked, sounded, and smelled
like him, because they came back shaking and pale and quickly grew tired
of talking about it.
They
did not attend the senior picnic, even in broad daylight and with 200
classmates, because it was held in the same part of the Mount Baker
wilderness.
These were popular boys—not the type to shy away from attention or make up stories in order to draw attention.
Real or not, Sasquatch is real to them--and that makes him real to me.
So that’s the pot of stew that makes my book. Boo
Radley lives in society but doesn’t want to be a part of it. So do many hippie
communities. I made a harmless group of hippies turn into a monster (cult).
The kids are based on every student I’ve ever had, in some way. The
story is about a funny group of friends who have each other’s backs no matter what. They
must change to survive. The monster they fear saves them, while the real monsters
turn out to be people they’ve known all their lives. This
book is by, about, and
for legit teens, and also for those of us who are older and wish we
could go back for just one day-- to see and hear as perfectly—to feel
as deeply—as we did when we were seventeen.
Cherish the past, embrace the present, race into the future. This
is Chasing Prophecy.
How did you choose the names for Chasing Prophecy?
I
love YA books but I sometimes don’t make it past page 10 when I realize
the characters are named Justin, Dakota, Madison, Sierra, and MacKenna
(again
. . . .). Same old names I believe communicates to readers that they’re in for a
same-old story.
So I just started with wanting interesting names as a general concept.
That’s how I came up with Mo & Max as the two main guys.
Regarding the last name “Bethlehem” I liked it as an innocent sounding word where something big BEGINS.
I wanted them to be innocent-seeming before they became bad. When
I was little we had a ceramic manger scene we’d put out on the coffee table at Christmas time. The
base of the stand said “little town of Bethlehem.” So I’ve always thought of that
as being about innocence & I thought what better name to turn into something bad. I’m
twisted like that. I almost named them “the Innocents” but one of my early readers
thought that sounded dumb & that I should name them after a place.
When
I was growing up in Spokane there was a group of peaceful hippies with
interesting names who lived on a big piece of land north of town.
That was the first time I’d heard of communal living. During
later summers, we’d stay with my dad in Marin County, just north of San Francisco. There
were a couple groups who lived in communal fashion near the base of Mount Tamalpais. A
guy named Love worked at the coffee shop in Fairfax. His sister, a teen named Present,
once babysat for us. She said her name meant “gift” and also “now” –like live in
the present. Ten years later I took a teaching job north of Seattle, where I met
another great group of people with interesting and meaningful names. Many of them
were students in my class.
I named the main character Prophecy because I wanted people to think about the future when they thought of her.
Chasing her is kind of like chasing the future, the way everyone needs her in some way to help with their own goals.
I was trying to be ironic in a spooky way when I named the bad guys Clean (dirty) and Able (to be evil).
I
liked the idea of someone named Love dying in the first 10 pages
because then it’s like ‘where did love go—why are things getting so
bad’, although this briefly-mentioned
character of Love has nothing to do with the nice guy in Fairfax who
made awesome blueberry muffins. None
of my characters are real people. They represent ideas, not real human beings I’ve
met.
How do you cope with writer's block and what is your writing process?
You
know, I have never had writer’s block and I just don’t understand it.
That doesn’t mean I write 5 hours a day like Stephen King.
I’ll sometimes go days or weeks at a time without writing a word, but I’m not doing it in agony.
I’m just waiting to feel inspired for the next project. When
I have a project I start with a couple scenes, then do an outline. Then I usually
just stop for a month & read a lot in that genre. Then I come back & get rolling.
I
went from concept to outline to 300 pages of Chasing Prophecy in about 4
months. Of course those 300 pages were a mess, so I took a couple
months off, then came back to
it w/ peer-feedback in mind & started again for a couple quality
hours per day. I
did a lot more cutting than adding in the 2nd stage, ended up with about 200 pages, then went plus/minus/tweak/take
a break, plus/minus/tweak/take a break, for about another year, and here I am. I
know there are lot of writing guru-types out there who kind of make
people feel like losers if they’re not writing 2,000 words a day. When
I’ve tried to do that, I’ve written a lot of pure crap that did nothing to develop my talent or stories. Maybe
for some people that works, but not me. NFL football players practice their craft
6 months a year and spend the other 6 fine-tuning their bodies or pursing other interests so they can come back fresh. I
think the creative impulse is kind of the same. I do not get people who freak out
about writer’s block. That’s your brain telling you to chill out, go read in the
genre, paint the garage, whatever. Why do we writers like to beat ourselves up so
much? If I don’t know where a story goes next, then I need to re-outline or get
feedback, or just toss it in the recycling & start w/ a new concept.
I
thank god for the director Spike Lee, the first big-time artist I’ve
ever heard quoted as saying that his writing process is about 2
incredibly productive
hours per day, and to have the will to STOP with plenty still left in
the tank. With
that, when I sit down, I am relentless & there is no sighing or looking off into space. I
always come back ready to go & new ideas have appeared in the ensuing 24 hours. With
the
exception of editing/revising (when I sometimes will go 5+ hours at a
time), I have never “created” for more than about 2-3 hours at a time,
max. Anyway,
that’s just me.
Do you have any works in progress?
1) I’m
not done w/ teens and bigfoot. I’ve been kicking around a modern epic quest trilogy-type
thing in the same story world. Not sure if I’m feeling it yet but I’ll know soon.
2) A
collection of short story/essays about sucking at sports in high school, called “5th Quarter” like what David
Sedaris would write if he had YA in mind.
Who is your favourite character in Chasing Prophecy?
Max because he’s a funny smartass.
Where did you get the idea for Chasing Prophecy?
Kind of started w/ the character names (see above). I’m
interested
in what makes good people turn bad, so I started with a sweet group of
hippies, turned them into a cult, and went from there. The
cult angle I got from David Koresh in Waco, Tx (burned up himself + his followers rather than surrender to the FBI). How
do people get to that state of mind. Bigfoot is my tribute to Boo Radley, my all
time fave character from my all-time fave book, To Kill a Mockingbird.
Who is your favourite author?
Can’t pick just one. The
people
most influential on my own work are Stephen King, Harper Lee, John
Steinbeck, William Golding with a bit of Stephanie Meyer and Sherman
Alexie mixed in. The
one where I found him and just had to read everything he’d ever written in a month would be David Sedaris. He
is so funny and says so much with not that many words. He is the most honest, real
writer I’ve ever come across. John Green has been a big influence lately.
I’ve gone from not hearing of him to reading all of it in about a year.
What is your favourite book?
Mockingbird
What are you currently reading?
The 2nd
Hunger Games
Amish Vampires in Space
The new David Sedaris
What are your hobbies?
Hanging with my eight year old, Zachary and getting into whatever he’s into.
Reading & writing of course. Gave
up snowboarding after 15 years so I could ski same runs with my family. Falling
a lot. Learning.
Loving my wife, Laura.
Quick-fire questions:
Chocolate or ice cream? Chocolate
Paperback or ebook? Ebook
Dogs or cats? Dogs
Go out or stay in? Stay in
Summer or winter? Summer (it lasts about 6 weeks in Seattle J)
