21 Minus: Interview with Gracie!

21 Minus is here!

As Anna Wagner, the organiser of this sweet event, describes it, "21 Minus is my attempt to bring together a group of fantastic young writers, all aged twenty-one or younger, and let them tell their stories via questions asked by their peers. It will also feature some great giveaways (including an ARC of GRIM!) and should be lots of fun all the way around."

The idea is, each participant interviews another participant. Although we knew who we were interviewing, we had no idea who was interviewing us. When the interviews are posted (today!) we include the link to the blog of the person we interviewed, so everyone can blog hop to find out who interviewed whom!

So, if you want to meet some cool young writers, you can join in the blog hop and go and read everyone's interviews! Plus, I hear there are prizes involved ...

Anyway, today I interviewed Gracie from I Am A Writer, Hear Me Roar:

1) Why did you choose to start blogging?

It all started with a book, of course — Your First Novel by Ann Rittenberg and Laura Whitcomb, which is a book about how to write a book and go through the process of getting published. I read it and it referred me to a whole bunch of good websites about publishing, etc. One of the websites it suggested was Guide to Literary Agents, so for some reason I signed up for an e-mail subscription, even though at that point I had no interest in trying to get an agent. Then one of the features they had referred me to some writer’s blogs, and I discovered the insane online world of writers and publication. I remembered a blog I had started and left in the dust about writing and such, so I decided to revive it and see where it could go. Personally, I just wanted to blog because I wanted to have fun sharing ideas and whatnot. Also, it’s writing.

2) How (and why) did you start writing?

How? Well, when I was four, I started to painstakingly carve out wobbly letters with a pencil crayon... actually I have no idea. I was really young when I started writing and started loving it. Ever since I can remember, I wanted to be an author. Some little kids have those crazy dreams for a career – Disney princess, superhero, whatever. Not me. I have always wanted to be an author. I think a lot of the reason I got into writing so young though was because of my love of reading, and that probably came from my parents somewhat, because they both like to read.

3) What do you think are the best things about the online writing community?

What you can learn, I think. There is so much to learn about writing and publishing, but you can find so much information online. Sometimes I’ll hear things about people doing the exact wrong thing when looking for a literary agent or whatever, and I just don’t understand how they somehow don’t find the information they need when the resources are right there at their fingertips. You just have to take the initiative to go and find the information you need.

Publishing isn’t the only thing to learn about online, either. I’ve learned about stuff I never would have thought. There’s so many different opinions about books and various things to do with books... it could be like, a philosophy course or something. So I guess the discussion about various book/book-related issues is another awesome thing about the online writing community. J

4) How does your family influence or support you in your writing?

I’m not one of those people who has to be constantly yammering on to everyone about their current characters and stories, but my family is definitely supportive. One thing that is really awesome is that my parents are actually parents that don’t just automatically love my work, especially my dad. If I want them to properly critique it, then they will. Usually I’ll get them to look over my work if I’m planning to submit it somewhere, and the feedback they’ve given in the past has been extremely helpful. As far as influencing my writing... my blog writing is influenced more by my family than my WIPs, just because my stories are usually really weird and it’s harder to fit real-life situations into them, although I’m sure eventually aspects of my family life will appear somewhere...

5) What's the hardest thing about writing?

Making myself sit down and WRITE. I have no idea why, but that is what’s hardest for me - making myself stop surfing the internet or reading or whatever else and just writing the ideas in my head. I’ll have the whole next scene planned out, but I won’t sit down and write it. Oh, I have a good quote, by Gene Fowler: “Writing is easy: all you do is sit staring at a blank sheet of paper until the drops of blood form on your forehead.”

6) What are your thoughts on the YA genre at the moment?

That’s certainly a broad question... I love YA, which makes sense, because I am currently a Young Adult. Yes, there’s a lot of stereotypes and things done over and over again in YA, but there are millions of books in the world. Out of all of those, I’m sure I can find books that I like. There’s a lot more to YA than just vampires and dystopian worlds. Lots of people seem to like throwing out general statements about YA these days, but really you can’t do that. There’s too many books, too much variety, too much uniqueness to just put them all in a group and make a statement about them.  

7) If you had to describe your latest WIP in one word, what would it be?

Augh. Because that thing is a mess right now! Haha...

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Thanks, Gracie! This was a really fun interview.

Okay. Now, if you want to head over to Gracie's blog and read her interview with another sweet young writer, click here. And for all you need to need about the blog tour, including the details on prizes (and how to win them!), you can visit Anna's blog.

Have fun hopping!