Sports Stories=Life Stories (or what I would have said at the ALAN conference)

Moira Silva, the ALAN workshop moderator whose company I would have had the pleasure of keeping this past Monday at the workshop I never (thank you, Delta Airlines) got to, just sent along the most gracious note of understanding, and I am grateful. Had I had
the chance to be among her and my co-panelists, I'd have answered Moira's questions this way.

Clearly you have chosen sports as a point of engagement with young people. How did you decide to use this lever? (Was it a conscious decision or did it evolve as you wrote?)
I built the character of Elisa first; I lived in her head for a while. Since she is patterned after who I was years ago, I knew her heart, I knew what would heal her from all the hurt and isolation she was feeling. Skating—its lift, its flow, its speed, its way of making a skater feel graceful, empowered, beautiful...I wanted Elisa to have all of this. I want all young people to have all of this.

What point of engagement worked for you as an adolescent reader/writer? Who/what provided that for you?
Language mattered most to me—the song of it, the way it played on the page. I skated myself, choreographed some of my routines, and I always fell for stories that felt choreographed to me—bigger than plot, bigger than dialogue, bigger than technique. I fell for the emotive entangling work of F. Scott Fitzgerald.

As you write your sports stories, do you consider your audience to be both boys and girls?
I recognize that girls have been my primary readers up until now. I don’t write for them necessarily, but my books find them.

Can you describe a time when sports played an integral role in your life?
Sports are essential in my life. There’s a great deal of connection, for me, between the way a body can move or can be taught to move, and the way that words move across the page. I ice skated for many years, then joined the high school cross country, winter, and spring track teams, where I was a sprinter, high jumper, and long jumper and also a part of a relay team that went to states and to Jamaica. I played high school tennis as well, and when I went to Penn, I learned squash and played on the Varsity team. I was a tom boy through it all, always kicking and throwing the ball with guys. Now I am learning (always learning) ballroom dance, which is much more of a sport than one might at first think. And which requires better clothes than I own now or ever will own.

Readers have categorized your writing as sports stories; how else would you classify it?
I write about young people at turning points in a language-intensive way.

What have you hesitated writing about, or even eliminated? In other words, what negotiations have you made in writing for young adults?
I am always working against my tendency to play out a feeling or a thought too long, at the expense of plot. I try to speed things up more than I might otherwise, for other genres. By writing skating into UNDERCOVER and dance into HOUSE OF DANCE I was able to vary the rhythm and sound of the books.

Since our workshop theme is negotiations and lovesongs, can you describe a situation that a character of yours is trying to negotiate?
Elisa, my heroine, is writing love notes on behalf of love-struck boys when she realizes that she’s falling in love with one of her clients. It’s a conflict of interest, shall we say.

By using sports in your writing, what kinds of themes can you develop?
Pushing against the odds.

Can you tell us a bit of information about what you are writing on now?
NOTHING BUT GHOSTS is due out in June, and though galleys are already out, I’m still tweaking it in true Tennessee Williams style. I have a fourth YA book due out next February about a mission trip to a squatter’s village in Anapra, Mexico. I have a short story in a forthcoming HarperTeen anthology called NO SUCH THING AS THE REAL WORLD. I’m working on a novel that takes place in 1876 (in which there is rowing and some more ice skating).

Who has been the easiest character for you to write about? Hardest?
Ease comes with familiarity. All my characters are implanted with parts of me. I can move through them and walk with them once I know who they are.

How has the Internet affected your writing process and overall career as a writer?
My blog has brought me close to younger readers, helped me understand what is important to them and how they dream. It has also yielded friendships with adult readers and writers that I cherish.