Where do you get your ideas?
6 July 2009
Stephen King has a great quote regarding his friendships with other writers. He says, “We are writers, and we never ask one another where we get our ideas; we know we don’t know.”
In my limited formal interviews, I haven’t been asked this specific question, but I’ve been asked, “What was your inspiration to write Me, Just Different?”
This is a really tough question to answer. Particularly when I’m doing a 3-minute radio interview and could ramble on for a good ten minutes.
Some ideas, like Stephen King said, I really don’t know. Like in the Ross family, all the boys’ names start with C, and so the little boys decided to name their dog Kevin, but spelled Cevin so he fits into the family. I don’t know where that came from. (The fact that he pees on people when they pet him came from the Jack Russell Terrier I had in high school.)
Other ideas get ripped from my real life and then honed into fiction. Like the book is set in Kansas City because at the time I lived in Orlando and was crazy homesick for it. Skylar and her friends mostly live in the suburb Fairway because I’ve always wanted to live there.
The idea for two sisters who are both beautiful but look totally different from one another comes from my cousins. Their mother is Korean (or half Korean, maybe) and their father is Caucasian. The oldest one looks similar to her mother and the younger similar to her father. Skylar’s mother, instead of being Korean, is Hawaiian because Ben and I vacationed in Hawaii during one of the Me, Just Different drafts.
Eli’s character came from students I saw in my own youth group days, who came to church just because their parents wanted them to. Their lives at school never reflected what they learned at youth group or on Sunday mornings.
I know I’ve said this in written interviews before, but Skylar’s conflict with Jodi—them liking the same guys and the same guys liking each of them back—came from a middle school situation with me and one of my best friends, Jodi. Though real life Jodi is incredibly nice, so she and character Jodi have basically nothing in common. (Until later books … just a little teaser for ya…)
So there’s a partial answer about what inspired me to write Me, Just Different. I doubt I’ll give this answer Wednesday morning during my first TV interview. If you’re in the Kansas City area, it’s on Channel 4 and scheduled for 8:50 a.m. Yes, it’s live. Yes, I’m nervous. Prayers please!
And this is the kind of stuff that makes a story feel so close to home! I LOVE the behind-the-scenes info only the author can dish out.
And why didn’t I already know all of this?? We’re going to have to have a “I got this from that” talk sometime at conference;-)
Posted by Roseanna on 7 July 2009