So excited to have Heather Manning guest post with us today. Heather has published her first book, Swept to Sea with Astraea Press and she is only 16! She shares some of her experiences in publishing and writing. Please welcome Heather!
When strangers find out that I am a traditionally published teenage author, they tend to stop what they are doing and look at me a second time. I can imagine what’s going through their heads. “This little girl actually got herself out into the publishing world? How did that happen?” People who already know me also sometimes give me that look when they realize that my book was published. “Shy little Heather wrote a novel and pitched it to strangers? Who knew she had that in her?”
While I never expected to see myself published before my seventeenth birthday, I have worked hard to get where I am. I’ve spent summers inside, writing my novel, while my friends were out by the pool getting tans. I’ve stayed at home to edit rather than hanging out with schoolmates. And guess what? I don’t regret that one bit. I love where I am and how I have gotten here.
The world of publishing seemed big and scary to me at first, but after some research, I learned what I needed to get ready and what I needed to do to actually pitch myself to the industry. I was comfortable enough to go to a writer’s conference and pitch to publishers, and I eventually achieved my goal: a book contract.
My novel, Swept to Sea, examines very real issues, most of which I definitely have not experienced in real life. Eden, my heroine, is running away from her abusive fiancé. Some people might say that as an inexperienced author, I have no right to write about such things, but I write from my imagination. I read, read, and read, and apply what I read to my imagined worlds. Do you think J. K. Rowling actually went to Hogwarts, or that Kathryn Stockett worked as a maid in the 1960s? I don’t think my age factors into the quality of my writing at all—at least I hope not. I think if the author does enough research and genre studying, they can achieve a great finished product.
As a historical author, research might be even more important to me than it is to authors who write in other genres like fantasy, where the author completely creates his or her own world. To get into an understanding of the feel of the period I’m writing in, I will usually select a few fiction works that take place during roughly the same time and read through them. Next, I will think through the basic plotline I have set out for my book. Are there any parts where the setting will directly affect my events? Recently, I was researching a city for the sequel to Swept to Sea, and learned that just a few years prior to the year my novel takes place, there was a terrible earthquake that destroyed nearly everything in sight. If I hadn’t caught this, my story would have been historically inaccurate! Instead of letting this historical fact discourage me, I worked it into my story. I made it affect my characters’ lives and even gave one of my characters a scar from the encounter. This helped me to round out my characters and give them more depth.
After these initial researching steps, I usually go ahead and write my novel without worrying about research. If I run into something I want to learn more about, I will jot down a note and look it up later. When I go through the editing process, I make sure that everything seems historically accurate, so my characters don’t use a term or an object that was around after they were.
The research process can sometimes seem very long and tedious, but I find that if I break it up into smaller sections, I can get where I want to be.
As a teenage author, I may even have an advantage in the research department—all those history classes are still fresh in my mind! J