FAQs: Do You Have Any Advice for Young Writers?

Many have asked, and so I will answer.

First of all: I suspect some of you really mean to ask me for advice to writers generally, because a young writer is not some strange species of writer that can't benefit from general writing advice, and fortunately I keep a blog full of my thoughts for writers generally, with a small database of posts about various topics. I will copy that database at the end of this post so you can poke around my blog if you feel like it.

And if you want advice about how to get published, you'll have to frequently ask that question separately, my dears. (That is sort of a joke. You only have to ask once.)

Young writers! Guess what? I am one of you. Despite no longer being an adolescent, I am still 24, which is on the way low end of the writer age spectrum. I am not a source of great wisdom, because great wisdom develops over time, and quite frankly, I haven't had a whole lot of that. But I'll do my best.

When I was a teenager, I was in gifted/extended/whatever you want to call it English classes, which meant two things: 1. I had gotten external affirmation of my writing skills, so I was kind of arrogant, and 2. I was very defensive and insecure, because pretty much everyone in my classes was smarter than I was. (No, seriously.)

Maybe you are not like that, my young writer friends, but I know that at least some of you are, because I just do. It's okay, don't worry, I feel the utmost sympathy for your position! And I still like you. And in fact, it's my intimate knowledge of your position (well, our mutual position) that leads me to give you the following advice:

Cultivate humility, patience, and courage.

Oh look, three words. Let us see if they can form a list!

1. Cultivate Humility

Humility is a word that people are not sure how to define, I think, because for some it reminds them of the word "humiliation." When I say the word "humility," I am not talking about beating yourself up or convincing yourself that you suck. For our purposes, I am defining humility as "seeing yourself the way you truly are."

What I mean is: you are young. You have not had a lot of time to develop your skills. You may be advanced for your age, but that doesn't mean that your writing is well developed. I can say this because MY writing is not usually well developed! It's okay. It is okay to say that you are simultaneously talented and in need of help, because that's the truth of where you are, and it's the truth of where you always will be. You will never, ever get to a place where you don't need help or work or development as a writer, no matter how old you are.

So when your English teacher writes critiques all over your creative writing assignment or papers, don't spend your time after class bashing him or her and defending yourself against those critiques. Instead, hold these two ideas in tension in your mind: your work is not worthless. Your work could use improvement.

Become like a sponge that absorbs every piece of advice or teaching or criticism or praise that it can possibly hold. Realizing that you have a lot to learn is cultivating humility. The actual act of learning cultivates humility. When you hand your writing over to a friend or teacher to get their feedback, and you do it with the attitude of "here is my work. I love it, but I need your help to make it better," you are cultivating humility. And when you are proud of yourself for writing something you think is good, or happy when you get an A on an assignment, that is not NOT cultivating humility. It is embracing the truth of where you are, which is that you and your writing have succeeded in some way.

2. Cultivate patience

Sometimes young people are in a big hurry to do everything. You think, "If I don't get a book published at 17, I'm a failure!" Even if you know that's irrational, you might still feel it, and my advice to you is to ignore that feeling of urgency as much as possible. Basically, apply the brakes and give yourself some time.

I was always pretty good at patience, mostly because I was terrified of showing my writing to anyone. But I sometimes get messages from young writers saying "help! I can't finish a manuscript, what do I do?" or "how do you stay interested in a manuscript long enough to finish?"-- very perplexed people wondering what's wrong with them, that they can't stick it out until the end.

There is nothing wrong with you! I just went back and counted, and I have 48 unfinished manuscripts in my writing folder. 90% of them are from before I reached age 18. Some of them are two pages long and some are 150 pages long. Yes, that's right, it took me AT LEAST 48 tries to stick with an idea long enough to finish it, and I didn't worry about it, because I wasn't in a hurry.

Cultivating patience doesn't just mean that you're patient while you wait for query responses or critique partner feedback or what have you. It means that you are patient with yourself, and with your plan for your life. There are so many paths to take, and so many definitions of success, and so many second, third, fourth chances to get it right. Don't pressure yourself or badger yourself or other people to make things happen now now NOW. Go at a pace that feels comfortable, and that makes you love the process of writing-- because if you hurry so much to get to the finish line, you may not enjoy getting there, and that's where the writing IS.

In writing and publishing, you cannot usually control how fast things happen, or if they happen. What you can do is fall in love with writing, and that way, if the success doesn't come when you want it to, you still have something truly valuable, which is the time spent doing something you love.

3. Cultivate courage

The thing is, if you spend all your time trying to be humble and patient, you may never take any risks. And there must always be risks. All these things I'm telling you are like juggling balls-- it's a constant fight to keep them all in the air without dropping one. So seriously, don't drop courage. Courage will urge you to send your writing to people you trust to get their feedback. It will motivate you to send your writing in to contests. It will tell you to apply for tough schools or programs. It will make it possible for you to accept people's critique and still keep writing. It will help you to brave the bad critiques, the disparaging remarks, the raised eyebrows, and the internal doubts that tell you that you are not good enough and it's not even worth trying.

It is always worth trying-- and it's always worth failing! Courage will arm you against failure in a way that nothing else can. It is the little stirring inside you that says, "that person who hated my writing or told me it would never happen for me, or that bad grade, or that little voice in my head that thinks I suck, can all kiss my butt, because today I am going to try again." You need courage to face what's ahead of you, young writer, because it won't be easy. But if you love to write, and you love books, you can do it. So be brave and take risks.

So that's my advice for young writers. I can guarantee that even if you agree with it and want to take it, you won't follow it all the time. What I'm saying isn't, "Do this perfectly!" it's, "hey, here are some things that are worth trying to do." I hope it helps! Young writers, I salute you.

---

Here are the links I promised. They are also on my FAQ page on this blog:

Concrete Writing Advice
The Backpack, a.k.a Some of the Most Useful Writing Advice I've Ever Gotten
1st Person, and Why It's Not As Easy As It Sounds
Detachment From Your Writing
Trilogies Are Like Long-Term Relationships
Trilogies Are More Like Polygamy, Actually
World-Building
Dialogue, and How Grey's Anatomy Isn't So Great At It
On Sequels
Advice for Young Writers
Rules: Friends of Creativity
Redundant Sentences
Advice I Haven't Taken
How I Revise (Insurgent Edition)
Writing and Not Making Decisions
Draft-Writing Advice: Don't Look Back
Reducing Word Count

Characters:
Backstory and The Maze Runner, by James Dashner
Basic Human Priorities and Story Momentum
Thoughts About Villains
Knowing Characters vs. Knowing About Characters
Insta!Love and Convincing Your Reader

Abstract Writing/Life Thoughts
Genre Shame is a Waste of Time
Writing and Courage
A Christian Take on Banning Speak
Writing the Ordinary
Sonnets and Failure
Writing and Anxiety
Grow Thinner Skin
The Gift of Upheaval 
About Notwriting
Freedom and Life in Stories 

The Writing Life (Querying, Beta Readers, Etc.)
Rejection and Hating the Book
Beta Readers
Reasons Why Your Non-Writer Friends Think You're Crazy
Patience Is A Habit, Not A Virtue
The Line Between Modesty and Self-Deprecation
Advice For New Writers (Who Want to Query)
Conference Tips
On College and Being Young

FAQs: Four and The Names We Choose

**Note: If you haven't read/finished Divergent, this post will spoil some things for you, so...don't read it!**

*
*
*
*
*
*
*

Will Four go by "Tobias" or "Four" in INSURGENT?

I thought I would address this more generally before the book comes out because I think the answer is interesting (and because I get asked this a couple times a week). Obviously I have a thing about names, or else "Beatrice" would not have become "Tris," and "Four" would have gone by "Tobias" in the beginning. I believe the names we choose on our own can be powerful, and they can embody a new identity for us.

When I was young my mother wanted to call me "Nikki" (a less popular short form of Veronica) and I absolutely refused to respond to it. The same thing happened when people tried to call me "Ronnie." I just wasn't having it. The nickname I chose was "V." I think it's because it sounded less cutesy or girly. What I chose for myself was something that fit with my personality-- I'm not exactly cutesy. (Though I am girlier now than I ever used to be-- maybe that's why I don't go by "V" as much anymore?)

Name changing is also interesting from a religion scholar perspective. In the Torah, when a biblical figure has an encounter with God, sometimes he or she is given a new name. Abram to Abraham, for example. Jacob to Israel. Sarai to Sarah. Same thing in the Christian Bible-- Saul becomes Paul, Simon becomes Peter. This usually signals the beginning of some kind of transformation, or indicates that a transformation has already taken place.

If you want a more current example, think "Mr. Anderson" versus "Neo," or "Augustus" versus "Gus" in The Fault In Our Stars (a little different, but interesting to consider, I think), or "Andrew" versus "Ender" in Ender's Game, or "Tom Riddle" versus "Voldemort," or "Anakin" versus "Darth Vader." (Wow, apparently I really AM attracted to this concept, because it's in all the things I like...)

It's like we have some kind of need, once we feel that we have changed, for people to call us something different. Is it for us, to suit the way we see ourselves? Or is it for them, to force them to think of us differently? Or a combination of both?

So now you might be thinking, whatever, I just think "Four" sounds hotter/cooler/like the lesser evil compared to "Tobias". Sadly, this is just how the inside of my brain is. Sometimes I get lost in here. Bear with me.

It's these musings about names that led to the Tobias/Four divide in the first place. Four views "Tobias" as the name of a helpless little boy, so he chooses "Four" as the name of his adult self in an attempt to leave the pain behind him. It signifies his strength rather than his weakness. But what he finds is that he can't ignore his past; it keeps creeping up on him, especially in his fear landscape. So in Divergent, he "gives" Tris his old identity-- he trusts her to know his vulnerable side, the side of the child and not the man. She recognizes the significance of this, which is why she starts to call him Tobias. It's the name he gave her, the one he trusted her with, and she begins to treasure it for that reason.

In Insurgent, this name issue becomes a bit more complicated, but for Tris it's the same. "Tobias" is the name she chooses for him, because it represents his secret self, the one he showed her and her alone. She calls him "Four" when she's with other people, to help him keep his secrets, but in her head, he's always Tobias.

Now, I like the name Tobias (I seem to be in the minority, but that's okay!), but I, like most of you, do prefer the name "Four," and honestly, I always intended for him to be called "Four" most of the time. So I tried really, really hard to make some kind of shift in Tris's mind so that it would make sense for her to call him Four in Insurgent. There are plenty of arguments for why she might do that, and I made all of them, I promise you. But what surprised me was that it never felt right; it didn't feel like what Tris would really do. So Tobias it is. She's very stubborn, you know.

So the short answer: in Insurgent, he's Tobias 95% of the time, because that's how Tris wanted it. You can feel free to keep calling him "Four," though-- I do!

Links to Old Posts...By Category!

I updated the FAQ page (it was a bit out of date), so if you have questions you think might be Frequently Asked, check it out!

Also, I created a huge database of links from previous blog posts, so you can look up posts by subject instead of getting lost in the blog archives. The links are on the FAQ page, but I'm going to post them here too.

Back before Divergent came out, when most of you had not found this blog yet, I did a series of amusing stunts as kind of "tests of bravery"/general ridiculousness. They're the only vlogs I've done, really, and I thought it would amuse you to see how I celebrated getting the book deal (by jumping into a bathtub full of marshmallows) and how I freaked out when I was supposed to face my fear of heights, etc. So those are in the first section, below.

My Experiences

How I Got My Agent
How I Got My Book Deal
Film Rights Sale
The Reality of Film Rights Stuff
The Time I Jumped Into A Bathtub of Marshmallows (with video)
The Time I Jumped Into A Public Fountain (with video)
The Time I Slid Down an 18-Foot Vert Ramp (with video)
The Time I Drank Pop Rocks and Coke (with video)
Some Book Recs

If what you're looking for is actual practical advice about writing, those links are here:

Concrete Writing Advice
The Backpack, a.k.a Some of the Most Useful Writing Advice I've Ever Gotten
1st Person, and Why It's Not As Easy As It Sounds
Detachment From Your Writing
Trilogies Are Like Long-Term Relationships
Trilogies Are More Like Polygamy, Actually
World-Building
Dialogue, and How Grey's Anatomy Isn't So Great At It
On Sequels
Advice for Young Writers
Rules: Friends of Creativity
Redundant Sentences
Advice I Haven't Taken
How I Revise (Insurgent Edition)
Writing and Not Making Decisions
Draft-Writing Advice: Don't Look Back
Reducing Word Count
Characters:
Backstory and The Maze Runner, by James Dashner
Basic Human Priorities and Story Momentum
Thoughts About Villains
Knowing Characters vs. Knowing About Characters
Insta!Love and Convincing Your Reader

I don't talk much about querying or the post-writing, pre-agent process, but these are the posts I have done about those things:

The Writing Life (Querying, Beta Readers, Etc.)
Beta Readers
Reasons Why Your Non-Writer Friends Think You're Crazy
Patience Is A Habit, Not A Virtue
The Line Between Modesty and Self-Deprecation
Advice For New Writers (Who Want to Query)
Conference Tips
On College and Being Young

I occasionally get philosophical about writing and how it relates to life (or vice versa), and those posts are here (these are some of my favorite posts, by the way):

Abstract Writing/Life Thoughts
Genre Shame is a Waste of Time
Writing and Courage
A Christian Take on Banning Speak
Writing the Ordinary
Sonnets and Failure
Writing and Anxiety
Grow Thinner Skin
The Gift of Upheaval 
About Notwriting
Freedom and Life in Stories 

And some random Divergent stuff:

Some Divergent Stuff

The Message of Divergent
Random FAQs (including character appearances, casting requests, etc.)
How Much Divergent Changed (from 1st draft to publication)

Divergent Inspiration

(I did a lot of bloggery this morning-- I have a post about Harry Potter and humor and writing and whatnot on YA Highway today, too, if you want to check it out!)

What inspired you to write Divergent?

Without a doubt, this is the most frequently asked question of all the frequently asked questions, and that does not surprise me at all. I always want to know where my favorite authors get their ideas. And it seems pretty simple, because there was a precise moment when the writer started the story, and so it seems like there had to be a precise moment when they came up with the idea for it.

The thing is, for a lot of writers, it's more complicated than that. For those of us who didn't have a vivid dream, or ask ourselves a "what if" question, or any of the other concrete ways that ideas come to people, it's actually difficult to answer. That's why I give a different answer in every single interview I ever do-- because at the moment that I am asked the question, I think of another, equally important, source of inspiration.

So in order to answer it, I'm going to give you the overly detailed explanation. But I'll say, first, that Divergent really happened when a bunch of these pieces of inspiration suddenly coalesced in my mind as I was writing, and I got about thirty pages of a story from Four's perspective down, and then set it aside because it wasn't so good. It was only when I discovered Beatrice that I was able to write the full book, four years later.

Bits of inspiration for Divergent:

1. Psychology 101

I was taking it at the time. In Psych 101, you get an overview of the study of psychology, so you go through many things very quickly. I had just learned about exposure therapy in the treatment of phobias. Wikipedia explains this better than I do: "Exposure therapy is a technique in behavior therapy intended to treat anxiety disorders and involves the exposure to the feared object or context without any danger in order to overcome their anxiety." This is where the Dauntless initiation process comes from. I thought that a group of people whose primary goal was to overcome fear would probably use this technique.

I was also beginning to learn about social psychology and the Milgram experiment on obedience to authority figures, which made me think about how malleable our supposedly strict moral codes become in the right conditions. Something that Divergent grapples with.

2. That Damn Song

I was driving to Minnesota (I spent my freshman year of college at Carleton College, before transferring to Northwestern), and I get really stressed when I'm driving at high speeds, so my back was throbbing. I had to plug in the heating pad I had brought with me into the cigarette lighter thing, which mean I had to unplug my iPod, which meant I had to put in a CD instead. And the only CD I had was "The Open Door" by Evanescence.

Don't get me wrong, I really like Evanescence. But I was not fond of one song on that CD in particular: "Sweet Sacrifice." I listened to it anyway, because I knew I would be hearing the CD for awhile, and as I heard these lyrics: "fear is only in our minds/but it's taking over all the time," I got this picture in my head of a person jumping off a roof to prove their bravery. And when I started to think about why a person would do that, I came up with Dauntless.

3. Division Into Groups

I have a thing for groups, and I always have. It interests me in speculative fiction, whether it's the houses at Hogwarts or the armies in Ender's Game or the houses in Kushiel's Dart (which I didn't read all of, because it made me blush too much, but the house thing kept me going for awhile). I also have a long-time (now abandoned) obsession with personality tests, especially the Meyers-Briggs personality tests (depending on the day I'm an INFJ, INFP, or an ISFJ. I've forgotten what all those mean, though), and the enneagram (I'm a number 1: The Perfectionist. Now that one never changes. Ha). And I've always been interested in government systems that stick people in classes or castes (even if I'm also pretty horrified by them), or high school cliques, as depicted so well in Mean Girls:

So: groups. It was bound to happen.

4. Tris

I've said before that I always wanted to write a character who could convincingly deliver these lines from Agamemnon, by Aeschylus: "My will is mine...I shall not make it soft for you." And I also wanted to write a character who used only as many words as she needed to say what she needed to say. This is pretty much how Tris appeared: a smart, somewhat humorless girl with a voice that wouldn't leave me alone. And eventually, I decided I couldn't tell any other story but hers.

FAQs: The Random Edition

This is a round-up of some of the questions I've been getting on Twitter and in my inbox recently. In an attempt to wrestle some organization into this post, I have divided the questions into categories.

Yay, categories!


Insurgent Questions

When does Insurgent come out?
May, 2012!

How do I get an ARC (Advanced Reader Copy) of Insurgent?
If you are a book blogger, email your ARC request to Alison.Lisnow@harpercollins.com along with relevant links, stats, and information about your blog and its readership. (Please note that requesting an ARC doesn't guarantee that you’ll get one, since there aren't THAT many of them.) If you’re a fan but not a qualified book blogger, then watch the @HarperTeen twitter account, the DIVERGENT facebook fan page, and GoodReads for ARC contests and giveaways as we get closer to May.

Wow! The page count online says Insurgent is a LOT shorter than Divergent. What's up with that?
The page counts you see online are not always based on the actual manuscript. Sometimes they're just a number fed into the system as a kind of place holder. (I'm not sure why this happens, just that it does.) By my estimation, Insurgent is about the same length as Divergent.

Character Questions

What's Four's last name?
I have an official response to this question, and it is: you'll find out if you read Insurgent. Although I feel like I should add to that that it's not some huge shocking reveal. It's just that Four is so careful about using his name. He only does it when he has to. So I want you guys to feel the significance of it just like Tris does, even though it's not a shock.

What color is Four's hair?
The first time someone mentioned that I never said what color Four's hair is in Divergent, I refused to believe it. But then I double-checked, and realized that I didn't, actually. So, for the official record, his hair is dark brown.

What's Tris's eye color?
This one I did actually include in Divergent, but it's only there once or twice, so, again for the official record, her eyes are blue.

Who would you cast as Tris/Tobias?
In the past, I've responded to this in a few different ways, depending on my mood. I've said that I don't care who it is, even if they don't look quite right, as long as they're good at acting. (True.) I've said I like "nobodies." (Also true.) And I've said that I think Tris looks like Mia Wasikowska. (Still true.) And that I have no freaking idea who looks like Tobias. (This is the most true.)

Etc.

Can I audition for the movie?
I appreciate the enthusiasm, but not only is the movie-making process not nearly that far along yet, I really don't have anything to do with casting! All I do is write the books. Seriously.

Do you intend to write more books after this series?
Yes. But I'm taking one thing at a time.

How many books are in the series?

Some people ask this, I think, because the faction symbols are on the covers, and there are five faction symbols (therefore: five books, right?). But no. There will be three books, that is all.

FAQ: INSURGENT

Just a quick note--

I've been asked frequently over the last few months about the release date for INSURGENT, and my response has always been that there is no official release date yet, but it will probably come out around May, 2012. I thought I had been pretty open about it, but I think perhaps I was mistaken, so I figured it was time to put it on the blog so the information is easier to find.

So, again:

INSURGENT = Sometime in the vicinity of May, 2012. Probably.

When I do get an official release date, I will definitely announce it here. Thanks for being so eager to know. It is very encouraging, particularly as I continue to work on finishing the manuscript.

-V