Grace's friends were really fun to come up with and I'm sad that I didn't have the space in the book to showcase them more. (All Minx books have a strict 144 page count the story has to conform to.) I spent a lot of time developing them and it seems like a waste to never see them again. Ah well...At first I had trouble making them distinctive and real as possible with the little glimpses you get of them. Plus the fact that I'd been out of high school for over a decade when I wrote this made me self-conscious. I was afraid I'd come off like an old guy totally out of touch with today's youth trying to be "hip." You know those writers. There's nothing worse.Luckily, I was teaching at the Academy of Art's summer program for high school students at the time. Being able to draw upon them really helped me. There's all kinds of people and observations mixed into these characters. Bits and pieces of my students, cousins, and memories from my own high school years. It really does bum me out that I won't be using these characters again.
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Monday, June 30, 2008
Grace's Friends
Grace's friends were really fun to come up with and I'm sad that I didn't have the space in the book to showcase them more. (All Minx books have a strict 144 page count the story has to conform to.) I spent a lot of time developing them and it seems like a waste to never see them again. Ah well...At first I had trouble making them distinctive and real as possible with the little glimpses you get of them. Plus the fact that I'd been out of high school for over a decade when I wrote this made me self-conscious. I was afraid I'd come off like an old guy totally out of touch with today's youth trying to be "hip." You know those writers. There's nothing worse.Luckily, I was teaching at the Academy of Art's summer program for high school students at the time. Being able to draw upon them really helped me. There's all kinds of people and observations mixed into these characters. Bits and pieces of my students, cousins, and memories from my own high school years. It really does bum me out that I won't be using these characters again.
