My own novel publishing journey lasted eight years and followed a long and twisted road with lots of potholes.  How did I keep up the faith and keep revising?  Sometimes I wonder, but one word that I kept hearing all those years and that kept me going was original.  I had a truly original idea for a novel.  (It just took me awhile to find the most engaging way to tell it.)  Originality, along with a lot of really hard work, led to my dream coming true.

       So how does an aspiring author of anything come up with a truly original idea?  The easy — and difficult – answer is to look inside.  No, I’m not talking about that Amazon.com feature.  I mean, look inside yourself.  It might be trendy to have a vampire or fairy in a novel, but what absolutely has to be in yours?  In my case, it was flowers.

       I once attended a talk given by the Nobel prize winning author, Toni Morrison, and she said something truly profound:  “Write the novel that only you can write.”  That reverberated in my head for months and forced me to think deeply about what made me unique as a person/thinker/writer.  

        Over those months, I made a list of all the things I loved:  books, teenage girls, growing flowers, giving people flowers, smelling flowers, gardening, roller blades, being outdoors, hiking, soccer, chocolate ….  You get my drift.   All of my loves – pansies, orchids, lilac — started spinning around in my head.  I saw books and poems and songs about flowers everywhere.  I discovered more and more about the Victorian language of flowers.  Characters came to life in my head, and I started saying what if she ….

       Eventually, after more revisions than I care to remember, a few false starts with interested agents and editors, and then even more revisions, I transformed my personal loves into a novel worth publishing.  My first novel, Forget-Her-Nots, will come out this March from Greenwillow/HarperCollins, just in time for spring.

       As a former high school English teacher, I now wish I’d said something similar to Morrison’s statement to my own students:  Write the essay (poem, research project) that only you can write.  Students have the most difficulty writing when they couldn’t give a flying fig about their topic.  How can we as teachers truly expect them to connect to a thesis statement or topic sentence someone else came up with?  It’s nearly impossible to write well and originally about something if you couldn’t care less about it.

       Looking back, I wish I’d allowed my students more time to come up with questions and topics that were personally meaningful.  Even when a student “hates” a poem or short story or novel, that’s a strong reaction which can, with careful thought, lead to a meaningful essay.  Exploring your own hates, along with your loves, can lead to deeper, more thoughtful writing, whether you’re a freshman in high school or a seasoned novelist.

       Here are a few questions to get you (and your students) started on an original writing journey:

1)   What do I know about that most people don’t?

2)   What do I find appalling?

3)   What do I find downright fascinating?

4)   What brings me joy?

5)   What drives me nuts?

Happy writing!

About The Author

From ages 0 to 9, I moved every two or three years, which I like to think made me adaptable and open to new places, people, and ideas. We lived in San Francisco, Virginia Beach, Albuquerque, Lexington, K.Y., and Dayton, Ohio. The library was one of the first places we found anywhere we arrived. I’ve always found a home in books.  Read more about Amy Brecount White.

Related posts:

1. FORGET HER NOTS by Amy Brecount White
2. Connect with Bettina Restrepo: Moosing Around
3. Connect with Jennifer R. Hubbard: Encouraging Young Writers