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Nina LaCour just finished her fourth YA novel when we sat down to talk about everything from traumatic grad school workshops to tips for getting an agent to the difference between writing under contract and writing before publication. Nina’s first novel, Hold, was banned in some places and in others assigned by entire high schools. We discussed controversy. “Books are a wonderful place to start conversations,” Nina says. Offering encouragement to write the story you really feel compelled to tell, Nina shared about her year of rejection and her magic week of yes, about writing after becoming a mother, about turning her first novel into a screenplay and then into a film, and what she learned about structure from that experience (including the hilarious litmus test Nina stumbled upon for telling how your scenes are too long). She gave us great tips for writing for a YA audience, including not writing off their experience as less true, including the possible longevity of high school romance. We discussed breaking out of conventions, breaking rules, intuition v structure and pulling short stories out of novels. Nina laid out how she uses questions to drive her story, and gives us juicy, helpful details about her revision process and her writing group. This was a really fun, honest conversation with a wonderful, productive author.
By the way, the quote Elizabeth attributes to Somerset Maugham is in fact this one from E.L. Doctorow, from a Paris Review interview: “Writing is like driving at night in the fog. You can only see as far as your headlights, but you can make the whole trip that way.” Here’s the whole interview. http://www.theparisreview.org/interviews/2718/the-art-of-fiction-no-94-e-l-doctorow
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Nina LaCour
Nina LaCour is the author of three critically acclaimed young adult novels published by Dutton Books: Hold Still, The Disenchantments, and Everything Leads to You. You Know Me Well, a novel written in collaboration with David Levithan, is forthcoming from St. Martin’s Griffin in June, 2016.
She has tutored, taught, and guest lectured in various places, including Berkeley City College, Maybeck High School, Stanford University, and Mills College, where she received an MFA in Creative Writing in 2006. Her novels have been Junior Library Guild selections, ALA Best Books for Young Adults, and have appeared on many state and regional lists. Nina won the 2009 Northern California Book Award for Children’s Literature, was featured in Publishers Weekly as a Flying Starts Author, and was a finalist for the William C. Morris award. She loves teaching, reading work by emerging and established writers, and talking about the craft of fiction.
She lives in the San Francisco Bay Area with her wife, photographer Kristyn Stroble, and their daughter.
Story Makers is a podcast that features in-depth conversations with accomplished writers, filmmakers and industry experts about story craft, technique, habit and survival–everything you need to know to stay inspired, connect to your creativity, find others’ wonderful stories and your own success.
The hosts:
Elizabeth Stark is a published, agented novelist and distributed filmmaker who teaches and mentors writers at BookWritingWorld.com.
Angie Powers is a distributed filmmaker and published short story writer with an MFA in creative writing and a certificate in screenwriting from UCLA who teaches story structure at BookWritingWorld.com.
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