Interview with Kristin Kirby

How long have you been writing?
Pretty sure I started as soon as I could hold a pencil and scribble words. I remember writing stories, mostly about horses, by age seven. From then on I wrote short stories, poems, song lyrics, and the occasional unfinished novel. Then in my twenties my love of writing and love of film came together, and for several years I wrote screenplays.

How long have you been writing young adult fiction?
I'd started a few YA novels some years ago, but it's only in the past couple of years that I've devoted myself to the genre. My novels are probably for older teens, ages 15-18. The cool thing about this age group is that the subject matter can be anything significant for someone at the edge of adulthood. That can include some pretty basic, but heavy, stuff—life, death, love, sex.

What awards have you won?
I think I've won or placed in 20+ writing competitions. My favorites? Making it to the Finals in the Sundance Screenwriters Lab, and placing twice (as Semifinalist and Quarterfinalist, with two different scripts) in the Nicholl Fellowships in Screenwriting competition. I've also won the Wisconsin Screenwriters Forum contest twice with two different entries, placed Second in the Pacific Northwest Writers Association competition, and placed Third in the Washington State Screenplay competition.

What do you like to read?
Oh, gosh. Anything with a good story—mainstream and genre fiction, young adult fiction, narrative nonfiction, classics, history, plays. I especially love horror and noir and thrillers. When I was little, my big sister would read me horror short stories—I know, but I loved them—and then I read them myself when I learned to read. Then as a teen it was Stephen King, Richard Matheson, William Goldman. These writers really have a way with words and story. In between were a few writers for young people, like Walter Farley and S.E. Hinton and E.L. Konigsburg and E.B. White.

There's something to be said for not staying tied to a certain category of reading material. My parents never told me I couldn't read something, even if it was a book for adults. Consequently, I devoured everything that interested me. I also think that good writing is timeless—you don't have to read what's just been published for it to be relevant to now, to the human condition. And writers for young people should probably be well-read across the board.

I tend to like some of the older guys—Matheson, Jack Finney, Fredric Brown, Robert Bloch, Charles Beaumont, Jim Thompson, James M. Cain. They wrote for the pulps, and later for television or movies; some wrote for The Twilight Zone and Playhouse 90-type dramas. They also wrote amazing novels and short stories. They had to grab you fast, and know how to do plots—but character-driven plots, because they had to keep the reader or viewer interested and going with the characters on their journey.

As far as YA novelists, I think Robert Cormier is great. Also M.E. Kerr, Neil Gaiman, Alice Hoffman, Stephanie Meyer, M.T. Anderson, Philip Pullman. Books that really affected me as a young person were My Side of the Mountain by Jean Craighead George, Watership Down by Richard Adams, Anne Frank's Diary of a Young Girl, Red Shift by Alan Garner, Go Ask Alice by Beatrice Sparks, This Perfect Day by Ira Levin, George Orwell's Animal Farm, and The Pigman by Paul Zindel.

What do you do when you're not writing?
My day job is editing and proofreading, mostly in the realms of fiction manuscripts, screenplays, and videogame text. Still creative, but the other side of the coin. I love to travel. I've been to Africa and I want to go back, I want to go to Italy. I love going to movies. I love wine. I love museums and natural history. This may sound funny, but I love researching the next writing project. I've gone to interesting places and learned all sorts of cool stuff in the name of research.

What do you enjoy writing the most?
That's a toughie. I love writing novels because you can really get deep into your characters, can sink your teeth into the story, no holds barred. You can get into your characters' heads and not only see what makes them tick, but also put all that on the page. But screenplays, while more limited in structure and page length, keep you on your toes—you have to make every word count, everything has to move the story forward, there's no waste. I've learned character development, dialogue, plotting, and momentum from writing screenplays.

As far as genre, a lot of my writing has a darker slant. I blame watching Dark Shadows and The Twilight Zone as a kid! Oh yeah, and all those horror stories. I've written comedies and romantic adventures too, and will again. But I love intensity and melodrama, and that's really all a darker tale is—it's the heroine being tied to the tracks by the villain as the train comes roaring up. Only sometimes the hero doesn't get there in time.

What advice do you have for anyone interested in becoming a writer?
Some writers just know that's what they are, and they don't have a choice. Others maybe discover they're writers later in life. At whatever point you pick up a pen or sit at a keyboard and start writing . . . that's where the fun begins. It's also where all sorts of heartache, joy, frustration, and satisfaction begin. Maybe that's melodramatic, but it's true. My advice? Enjoy the process. Have fun creating characters and putting them in situations, and then watching them deal with those situations. You might sell your work; you might not. But you know you're a real writer when it's more about the writing than the selling.

All text and images in this site are © Kristin Kirby 2010