 school or middle school what I wanted to be when I grew up it was uh it was always a writer it was always I want to have a book with my name on the cover um but my path to becoming a fiction writer was very strange uh there's actually someone here yo Cassandra where are you yeah Cassandra uh I've known Cassandra for a long time a long time now um probably as long as I've been since I was back in Long Beach um I've had this very strange path to being a writer I was a pop culture writer and a journalist for a long time um sort of I spent a long time writing about music and writing about the music industry and going on tour with bands and writing about that and which was very much a dream especially because music is a huge love in my life and um it wasn't until my late 20s that I was like but you still want to write a book and you haven't actually gotten one published you have written books and nothing has happened with them um and so it was in my late 20s that I got an idea for something that I thought would be compelling enough and long enough to make a book and that was in 2012 it took about a year and a half to write one draft of that book and that is the book that became Inger as a gift which didn't come out for almost six years after that um and even then my journey was very different too because even though I was working on fiction I had a whole I got called it a job because I treated it like a job um but I was doing you know uh book reviews and tv reviews and it was this big very important very wonderful experience that I had running this website or the set of websites that I refer to as Mark The Stuff um which is Mark Rees and Mark Watches and so you know I started off commenting on fiction and then in 2018 is when Inger's A Gift came out and now I'm exclusively writing my own fiction um and so you know it was a very strange path I didn't have that thing where I went to college got an MFA published and then that's just the thing that I did I have had this sort of circuitous very strange path to becoming a writer but this is the thing that I've always wanted to do and in particular the the thing that is interesting is that I've pretty much gravitated to writing for children um what we in the industry colloquially refer to as kid lit I've kind of always stuck in that area um and I know a lot of that is because of my upbringing and a lot of it is this motivation to write stories for kids who don't normally see themselves in fiction and so that's been a huge motivation for the stories that I write I someday I'll write the I guess technically an empire starts back the Wampa story is like an adult story because like it's an adult Wampa but it's also like it's a space creature so I don't know how much that counts as like an adult story so someday I'll write for adults maybe I don't know I'm having a blast writing pretty exclusively for kids and middle school kids right now yeah that's awesome um technically I don't know if this counts for anything but we have it categorized in the adult section so take that for what it is but I feel like it has crossover I think you know young people like Star Wars um I kind of have to ask because I'm a bit of a a Star Wars nerd was that are you a are you a big Star Wars person I have a full sleeve of Star Wars my arm like I got the Death Star hanging out up here so yes it was from childhood my dad uh it was the thing that my dad and I bonded over is when I was growing up I probably saw that original trilogy a hundred times total by the time I was 10 years old that was you know like kids have a thing that they hyper focus on and they know every it was for me it was the original Star Wars trilogy um so yes it was it was I remember getting that email like hey we know you like Star Wars and you write do you want to write a story for the and I mean I was like I told my agent I was like I don't care what the details are the answers yes hey it was like maybe we should find out what the details I was like no it doesn't matter I'll give them my soul I'll go have a child and give my first born child up to do this like this is like drink like you're right for the thing that made you you know appreciate fantasy and science fiction like so it was a no-brainer for me uh wasn't easy though it was terrifying like this it's Star Wars like and not only that like this specific anthology like from a certain point of view is you have to write within existing canon and you have to write only from one specific character and this these anthologies in particular tend to be about the characters who don't really have lines who don't really have large and so you have to invent a story and so I actually I only pitched them two and one of them was taken and so they're and it was a winrow hood who is the dude with a weird ice cream like maker machine who's in best in city in cloud city um at the end of empire spikes back so I was like Anisha I wanted him there was someone already took him so I was like can I write the wampa who attacks Luke and they were like sure and then I turned in my weird space gentrification story and somehow it got published I still do the same like I don't I can't believe they got let me get away with that like it was an amazing amazing experience I would do it again in the heartbeat but um yeah well how surreal that is like to get to be able to write for the thing that made your childhood wonderful yeah is was it a little intimidating because you know star wars fans can be pretty rabid yeah yeah um I was more concerned about writing something that is so iconic not just star wars in general but like anyone who's seen the wampa like how do you make a story out of that so it was more it was more of a challenge of I I was less concerned about like let me make the fans happy and more so like I just want to do this right and I want to do a story that makes sense so I remember once I chose the one but I sat and you know I have the the empire starts back on blu-ray and I just repeatedly watched there's like a 12 it's only 12 minutes in the whole movie in which this creature is there and just looking and being like what are ways that I can fill in the gap how can I make this thing come get to this point and how do you fill that in um and so yeah that was where the intimidation was was I have to come up with something compelling enough that a a very intense hardcore star wars fan is like okay you did your homework but then also someone who who's a casual fan or maybe I don't know maybe you haven't I don't know who's picking this up who hasn't seen empire strikes back but if that is the case is it still entertaining is there still a plot arc like a beginning middle and an end um so yeah that very very intimidating um and actually kind of made me think kind of you have a knack of just writing across not just like genre but also you know a good balance of writing long form novels and short fiction and this is a super undead question so we could take it piece by piece but how is your approach different for you know maybe I'll focus on genre how is it how is your approach is it different for writing for different genre um oh that's a good question I don't know that I've ever thought of it that way uh but I was sitting here ready to answer like oh this is how I do short story versus like long form um the genre I mean I will say that you know I don't know if you know this anger's a gift did not start out as contemporary it was initially as I thought I was writing this grand science fiction trilogy set in like a slightly distant future and it was through the process of trying to find an agent that I got feedback from an agent who ended up being my actual agent um that I was doing it's a very common thing which is that first time novelists tend to have the kitchen sink approach which is yours this is your chance you might get in the publishing industry with this thing so I'm going to put everything I love in one book and he thankfully gave me the advice that let's slow down maybe you only should choose one of these things and save some ideas for something else but let's give this book focus so I that was also intimidating on a completely different level because I had never really sat down and written a purely contemporary story and I didn't think that I had the tools or the wisdom to write contemporary fiction but I spent so many years writing journalism where you're writing about the real world it's actually not that much different so I found as I was writing it I was like oh okay I do actually have these muscles in my brain that I do know how to use um and I will say with each of us a desert I sat down and the first chapter that story was like I really wanted to write this dystopian book um I thought about sending it in the you know distant distant future I did not plan to write a fantasy book so to answer your question is I hope in future projects I figure out what genre I'm going to write when I start writing a book because I don't seem to be getting that right with both of these both of my YA books I wrote in the the wrong genre for the story and had to do these massive rewrites I never saw myself as a fantasy author I like fantasy but just was like I don't think that that's my thing and while it was enormously fun and in such an intellectual challenge to attempt fantasy I have like a new appreciation for fantasy books because she is hard it is so hard it's because there's just very basic things that you have an assumption of when you're building a world when you're telling the story that you can't actually assume anymore because you have a reader coming into it especially be a a a fantasy savvy reader who's coming into a book and they know it's fantasy I wrote this assuming someone is going to pick it up and they don't know they don't know that it's fantasy they're just like I'm I'm going to read this book so that means everything that you come across there has to sort of be a reason that it's there especially when you're doing secondary world so the world in each of us a desert is entirely invented so I had to think about what is clothing look like this is a world in which the world is literally all a desert well not all of it you'll learn that there's some other things there but the world of the main characters the characters who are interacting on a daily basis everything around them is a desert so what does water look like there where do they get it how do they treat it is it uh almost something that they revere is it something that they're afraid of what sort of societies pop up if you live in a world where things are very stretched out and very far apart in very rural some of that came from my upbringing I grew up out in in riverside so in the inland empire and even though riverside is not necessarily a small city by any means it certainly has that mentality of you're very far from everything cool you're far from everything that's happening you know I grew up around lots of farmland I grew up uh my house was right behind a wildlife preserve so I was used to like there isn't a city around me I just go outside of my house and it's hills and the Santa Ana river and whatnot and so I wanted to write a book that that it had that feeling of like things are very far apart things literally far apart but also this sense of there is a greater world very distant from where I am and what does that feel like growing up when you feel like everything great is happening completely out of your reach so yeah my process became vastly different I had to do so much more planning for each of us to desert and you've read it so you also know that there are two or three very intricate plots where things have to happen at certain times I mean I had to I had to draw a map I had to do an actual timeline because parts of the story happened out of order one day maybe I'll write a simple straightforward book but I just turned in my my third wide book and it is also completely out of order and yeah it's hard I make it hard for myself but yeah I do approach writing them very very differently you know this next book um that I think is out next year my next wide book is I'm going back to the contemporary world and that was it was actually hard to like get my brain back into that because um I spent so much time inventing the world and and when you set things in something that is familiar I do think there is a lot less work you have to do as an author I explain to you like you go through a door you know what a door is I had to sit and think like what do doors look like and so that they don't have if you know it was a very intentional thing there are almost no doors in each of us at desert because I wanted to have a set uh where you got the sense that wind could blow through buildings to cool it down and so I talk about like burlap hangings a lot um so it's stuff like that that I never thought I would do as a writer and and now that became part of that process for that book and I imagined for each book while I may build on things that I learned from the last one I do find that my process changes with each manuscript I'm just hearing you talk about world building does it then especially with each of us a desert that kind of hearing how much work you put into it is it become hard to let that go like you you put so much work into it and no no it wasn't hard to let go because I had to rewrite each of us a desert twice completely fully rewrite through the editing process so by the time we got to like the beginning of 2020 I had put so much work in that book I was like I'm please take this and put it out into the world I mean I was very proud of it of its end that work but um an interesting thing is is I really I found that I really like writing stand-alones I haven't written a series of the many books that I have contracted that I haven't even announced that are coming out in the in the next few years they're all stand-alones as well and for me psychologically I like it because it means that I can have an ending and then it's done and so I did I will admit that I did build a slight open thing in each of us that does it that I don't want to spoil so that if I do want to come back to it there is another story to be told but no I I feel like I told the story that I wanted to I feel like I interacted with the world that I created in the ways that I wanted to um you know there is a narrative device throughout each of us a desert where when Sochille takes a story you the reader get to actually experience it which was my way of showing other parts of the world that the main character couldn't get to so that you've got this sense of how huge this world was that you know other characters are dealing with different climates uh you know it's not until one of the characters gives a story to Sochille that she sees I don't want to tell you but she sees it like she experiences a whole climate that she didn't even know existed um which I feel like for me was both a literal and metaphor metaphorical representation of that small town living like you don't you know growing up in Riverside you know the ocean just seems like it wasn't until we traveled to it that you're like oh right there's an ocean and people you know I get that all the time especially you know living here in New York they're like oh you lived in California I bet you went to the beach all the time I was like the beach was two hours away on a good day with no traffic on the 10 or the 60 like maybe we could get to the beach in two hours but no and you know it was an hour and a half to climb up into the San Bernardino mountains and see forests so and when you're poor and when you don't have a lot of time for those sort of things it felt very constricted like I lived in this tiny bubble what does the world look like like outside of that and I feel like metaphorically that's what each of us a desert is to me is that kid just longing to find out what the world is like outside of it yeah I I really appreciate how you're able to so openly and willingly put so much of yourself into your books I think that's um that's I mean I'm thinking from the perspective of a of a young writer that must be hard to to do right to be so vulnerable is does that ever get easier yeah oh it's easier now I was not with with anger as a gift there's a lot of very personal stuff in there that that I put in there and then I had like very close friends be like is this how you feel and I was like yeah sorry I just told everyone instead of just telling you um I think um I also you know if Cassandra could join in on this because Cassandra could vouch for me I got my start like being very open and vulnerable on the internet uh Cassandra and I know each other because we both follow the same band this band AFI whose shirt I t-shirt I'm actually wearing today um and you know I was a huge participant in their in their online message board and for me that was that glimpse to the outside world going and also going to school on Long Beach where I got to be out for the first time in my life and get to be myself and I I see my early 20s as not only me pushing the envelope in some ways that were actually genuinely terrible but also as like I'm trying to figure out who I am and a lot of that came with that was the early internet culture of like people beginning to share who they are and so then when I moved into my like journalism career and I started writing about music there was always a personal angle to it because I just felt like that was the best way I could tell a story so when I was touring with bands when I was writing about them it wasn't just here's this band they're growing on tour but I often made it very personal not only for myself but the band members too and I would write these long long articles about the loneliness of touring and what it's like to be so far from home to go from the feeling like you went you had the best show of your entire life to a show where 10 people show up and then they all leave because you you are the final band but really you should be switching places of the band who was opening and like stuff like that and I I see that personal angle as the thing at least at least I hope that's the thing that made me stand out finally when I finally wrote Ingrid's a gift when I was looking for agents and then when we ultimately sold it is that there is that personal vulnerability I think if there is a Markle-shearer brand it is that that there's always going to be a very vulnerable character at the center of it I think Moss and Ingrid are a gift and so Chila and each of us at Desert are vulnerable in vastly different ways but I think that's always going to be sort of like a staple of the fiction that I write so I will say now I don't really think about it I do what I think is best for the story and I'm not so concerned about well what does it mean to be this vulnerable I will say on the flip side though it does mean that I have very vulnerable personal responses to fiction which is surreal I also think it's a huge responsibility and I take it very seriously you know I've done so many school visits over the years and I'm right now a one just popped in my head where I did a school visit outside of Dallas Texas and after my little visit was over to the classroom like the class is excused but two kids stuck behind to come up to me afterwards and they had ran anger as a gift for their class and they came up to me afterwards and immediately came out to me and then not only came out to me but then the next words out of their mouth were don't tell anyone we've never said this to anyone which is simultaneously both this flattering amazing thing but then also terrifying because then you have to think like there's no one in your life this random stranger came to your school and I'm the only person you feel safe with so it's I don't like using the phrase double edged sword because I don't like to note like connotating violence with what this experience is like but I what I mean in that metaphor is that it is a thing being vulnerable I think I hope adds a level of reality and a level of emotional weight to the stories that I write but it also means that there is a level of reality and emotional weight that I get back from people who often don't see themselves and in particular an anger is the gift with the depiction of you know complex PTSD and anxiety and depression and mental illness in general and so that's probably the only part I think about is I do want to portray things with care and sensitivity and I do think about what my responsibility is as an artist and as a writer to put things on the page but in terms of like my old stuff who cares I'm just going to put whatever I want and whatever thing I feel is important to me that I want to talk about um I'll just I'll just close out this question with this is that this next book this young uh next YA book that I wrote is easily the most personal most vulnerable I've ever written like this is a subject I have avoided writing about and talking about for years and I I'm very excited that that my agent read the manuscript and was like this is the most feral thing you've ever written what is going on like this is also everyone's going to be super mad at you and I was like yes that's what I want I want you to all be upset um so yeah no I I don't I only get the thought in terms of what responsibility I have as an artist so that yeah so a kind of a follow-up it's so the decision it's it's conscious for you then to include what some might consider like social political aspects in your writing I mean yes it is it is though I've certainly done things where it was unconscious where I didn't realize that I was doing it um I had so there's a character and here's a gift named Esperanza and I was writing specifically from the experience of being a transracial adoptee even though I am left you know um and that's what my birth parents are I was I'm adopted and so I have a white mom into Japanese Hawaiian dad which is why my last name is Japanese um and so I wanted to put a transracial adoptee in a book but Esperanza's experience is not my own it's very very different and I wanted to comment on a very specific niche sort of complicated issue fully not intending some of the responses that I've gotten to it and what people assume that I'm talking about I I didn't have met in DC the day after Angus and he came out so this was May 23rd 2018 uh it was in DC with Jason Reynolds which was he's the nicest also so smart and boy he would not ask easy questions at all um and afterwards this older gentleman I'd say he's like late 40s comes up to me was like I bought this book last night I read it overnight it blew my mind I had to come here and thank you for it but I wanted to tell you that me and my husband we uh adopted a young Latina girl and now I think we need to have a very uncomfortable conversation about how we've raised her and I was like oh okay and they were like you know thank you for making me think of all these difficult questions and all these difficult problems and I'm sitting there like I wasn't writing for you like I this is not the intended message of this book I think there was a part of me later that was like did I just ruin his family like oh my god what have I done like spiraling with guilt like this is so that's a thing there are intentional things I wanted to write it about privilege and the way people can be privileged and not realize it and it was it's not for adults it's it's a book for kids so I'm not writing to change an adult's mind ever that's not I'm just never on the plate and then here's this adult coming to me like oh I think you changed my mind I'm like yes I planned that the whole time but I didn't and so yes I think most of the things are intentional but that's how artworks do is there's so much you can read into something and so many things that people can claim are intentional and read into it and to be quite honest as someone who's reviewed books and TV for years I think a lot of those interpretations are valid even if the original author didn't intend it things can come across so that being said I do feel like I am pretty intentional about the things that end up in my books I knew it was gonna happen sorry somebody came up to the window and was like waving at me like I'm in a zoo sorry I'm so sorry um oh oh something happened somebody raised their hand briefly if you have a if you have a question go ahead and submit it um they think it's like down at the bottom yeah next to me um you kind of touched on it I want to kind of jump back on it before we get too far away you mentioned your experience writing for for music and like music journalism uh somebody wanted to know how music and then specifically hardcore punk because they see your tattoos uh influenced your writing at all oh other than AFI I think there's like a punk ethos and and and sensibility to anger for gift absolutely I mean the song the book is named after a reference to freedom by writing this machine um it's a lyric from from that song I think there's you know a lot of music references in the book but I also think the ethos of you know supporting your fellow humans um the importance of protest I think all of that is so I don't know for me angry it feels very obvious an anger as a gift I don't think it is obvious in my in some of my other books but it influences certain things like uh for example each of us in desert is the first time I've written poetry in a really really long time all of the poems that are in the book I wrote and I also wrote them originally in Spanish I did not write them in English and translate them uh it was a very important thing for me and the last time I really wrote poetry extensively was when I was in bands because I consider song lyrics to basically be poetry so I was I think that it was also very scary to start doing because I was like do I even know how to do this anymore I don't know how to do this anymore so there's that element of it there's some music stuff in the insiders um I'm I to be honest I'm waiting until I have the right idea but I really want to write a punk rock like a literal punk rock YA book I feel like I've been listening to punk rock and hardcore since I was eight or nine years old I have such extension extensive knowledge and experience with it and I know I know I could write a great book I just haven't quite had the right idea I've had a few that are close um so I think more it tends to be more the philosophy and the things that I learned from hardcore bands like I think about how much I learned because of bands like bikini kill or bad brains or propaganda or or bad religion like bands who are so expressly political that they then taught me things because I would read their lyrics and I mean what are you actually talking about I don't understand what this reference is and like I feel like I know so much about Canadian history and pop culture because propaganda like this band I've been listening to forever and I know so much like I know what coaches corner is this weird hockey show and I know who Don Cherry is and I could like write an essay right now about how much Don Cherry sucks like I wouldn't know those things but it wasn't for my love of punk rock so it it tends to be more metaphorical representations of it but I someday my goal of my career is to write a YA punk rock book I just I don't know what it is yet it might be YA4 because I have an idea where I think I could fit it in there but I don't know yet I really want to know that I'm so thrilled but yeah I will be first of mind to read that one that sounds awesome uh let's see um somebody asked a question um I forgot to mention we're doing all of a bunch of uh summer reading programs uh for the summer one of them is video game design so this might be where this came from but somebody wants to know uh are you first of all probably you should ask are you into gaming at all are you a gamer okay if there's a gaming world that you could live in or yeah what would it be oh that could live in oh I mean I have different answers to different reasons my immediate thought was I'm a big fan of the Borderlands games um which we've not played or like a first person shooter but they're a joke but they're also serious they tend to make fun of first person shooters but I really like them because they're some of the only first person shooters that are like explicitly queer and then well there's a lot of main characters who are queer who are ace who are bisexual or pan uh I love that part about it I also love uh that you can die in that world and you just get digitally recreated so there's no death and I'm like that's cool because here's the thing once you said that question I was like oh any world said I like I would die in all of them like I would not last in all this only choose Borderlands so at least I have that save point it can be digitally reconstructed all the time um in terms of like beauty I would love to explore the world of Breath of the Wild the uh that game is just gorgeous and I feel like I would have a good time because there's so much you could do that isn't threatening in that game um and then I'm going to throw a wild card in which is that I just want to do it is the catamari games like catamari domacy which is that weird Japanese game where you're a little alien prince and your king father sends you to earth to roll a ball and you just pick up trash and I just love those games and how silly they are and it's not about anyone getting hurt and you just pick up trash and it's very sanitary and there's something super comforting about that so that's that's my answer yeah fantastic answers I yes I beat Breath of the Wild for the first time like a week ago so cool I'm 30 hours in have I finished 10 percent of the game probably not I can't I'm you give me an open world game I will do every side quest I will find everything I'm the person who stumbles into areas that I should be level 800 that I don't that's me I just go and I wander forever like I remember that was me with Skyrim too I've never completed a Skyrim game because I just get lost I built settlements I have like 50 dogs so I have to feed every day like I just get into the weird mundane thing and I'm like conflict story who cares I'm gonna take care of my dogs actually just do you find yourself bringing video games into your writing at all or is it are those two separate worlds or I think I don't I don't know that I do consciously I will say I do tend to have actually a more cinematic brain I borrow a lot from movies more than anything else and in fact I when I am writing pieces I like to imagine what the visual counterpart would look like that's how I that's how my brain works in when I have to describe things or do action pieces or whatnot I don't I the other thing is I've never written like a very high action story yet I'm sitting you're saying that and I'm like mark your mind you actually have but I can't talk about it I will and it was hard I will say it was very difficult because I tend to write a lot more contemplative long slow pieces but I did write something that was super fast-paced and a lot of action and it was a huge challenge um but I don't know that I thought of it as a video game more so as I thought of it as a movie and how would that look and how do you because I didn't realize what a skill that is to be able to describe action set pieces so that it's legible for a reader you have to be able to communicate where a person is physically where they are what it feels like all of the stuff and I'm like that's a whole new thing that I'm not as good at not that there isn't physical stuff in my book but I mean you really just that it's not it's a nightmare but it's like not like a constant you know high-throttle adventure kind of thing I feel like that's a that's a new area that I would like to experiment with like how do I write what I do but also have like high amounts of action I don't know yet but yeah it tends to be more movies than video games do you want to uh do you have any like specific movies that you feel you want to share that influence let's do this because I never get to talk about this uh each of us together each of us a desert is what if M. Night Shyamalan's The Village was a good movie I'm not even kidding you it is nine hundred percent the reason the book exists is that I hate The Village so much because there is a fantastic you should not have asked this question I have an hour long lecture prepared for all of you look I'll just here's the brief version there is a good movie hiding in M. Night Shyamalan's The Village the problem is it's a structural mess because the big twist happened 17 minutes before the end of the movie yes I measured because I wrote a whole long essay about this 17 minutes before the end of the movie the twist is revealed about what that movie is about it is the most interesting thing the movie does and then it's over and I have been obsessed with this mistake 40 years since it come out because I was so hyped about that movie I love the cast all those original trailers we all thought we were in for the right of our lives and I was so disappointed and if you think about if you've seen The Village or you can go read The Wikipedia or whatever look it up and then think about each of us the desert because I do a Village like twist about 20 into the book and I made the thing that changes a person's world happen early because I want to explore the rent that for me that and I'll say this too that's what I find compelling about young adult fiction I feel like young adult fiction no matter the genre no matter the you know whether it's younger YA older YA I feel like what makes that age group so interesting to writing about is that we are writing about transitional stages this is the stage between childhood and adulthood and generally speaking most YA books are dealing with a character who has to grapple with their whole entire world changing before them even in the quietest contemporaries even in the most action packed thrillers something is some rug is pulled off from underneath them and their understanding of the whole world has to change because that's what it means to become an adult and so I wanted that to happen early so that we could actually explore the revifications of someone realizing their world might not actually be true um so that's my I'm not even kidding you I once wrote it never got published like an 8000 word essay about why I might shum on to the village is terrible and here's the book I wrote in response I I hope that gives you a sense of what kind of nerd that I am that I can bet I'm like I'm so petty I wrote a whole novel in response to a movie that's that's what that's what I do we definitely do not uh support M. Night Shyamalan around here especially I'm avatar fan so well what he did to the movie yeah boo absolutely not terrible terrible terrible I mean we could turn this into M. Night Shyamalan and critical analysis because I thought about him because when he is good great fantastic but he's just so caught up we can't do this right now anyway it's actually an interesting point because I was going to ask do you find your because your blog you're doing a lot of sort of media analysis maybe criticism do you find that that informs your writing at all other than okay yeah actually and I told this to is so I went to Cal State Long Beach um I started as a creative writing major I only lasted one semester because the program there was not suited for me and I mean on a much darker note it was suited to me because I was one of two non-white kids in the class and the professor that I had for my short story workshop outright told me at one point that no kids no one would want to read my stories because no one wants to read about your people and it was just one of those things where I was like oh this is not I can't learn about what I need to learn from you it's not going to happen um I ended up being a political political science major I ended up switching because I thought maybe if I learn about the world if I learn about activism there's some way that it could use that to to sort of help my writing and so that definitely informed the positives and anger is a gift amongst many other things but I see my job or my my experience with mark reads in particular where I've been you know in august is 12 years I've been doing this website for 12 years you know reviewing books to me that's my mfa is picking apart books chapter by chapter and talking about things like theme and pacing and structure and whatnot and getting to see there was another interesting thing about it is that I I've covered some very long series on mark reads you know and I don't just mean long things like you know twilight or or harry potter or or the hunger games which are the three that I started off with but I then started doing entire author's body of work so I've read with the exception of one book all the tamer pierce's work um uh almost not all but all I've read all of the discworld books I haven't read a lot of terry practice other stuff and one of the very unique things about getting to read someone's publication history in order is getting to see them grow as a writer and I think that's an education for me is seeing one of the things that they change oh they used to do this a lot they don't do this anymore they don't sometimes it's as simple as hear our words they don't use anymore to when you get on you're like oh you're trying a much more complicated structure thing there's this narrative framing device in this book that you've never attempted before this is first person this is third person why do each of these things work how do they not work and whatnot so yeah I don't I fully do not think I would be who I am and be the writer and if I had not done that and let's bring it back around the long beach that book that I wrote when I was 19 years old that I finished in 2004 when I was 20 um part of the reason I mean look I just didn't know what I was doing when I was finished with it I printed it out it was like 180 pages and I sent it to like every editor that I could find I didn't look up whether they published Young Adult Fiction or anything I just sent it to editors and then sent it to a bunch of agents and being like they'll read it um I only got four responses they were all four rejections and when I went back in and when it was rereading this book I was like oh I can see why I made these choices that I did but they're not good choices these are not good writing choices there's so many better things you can do but I don't think I would have the knowledge to have been able to look at that manuscript and pick apart the things I like that were good ideas if I hadn't spent 12 years picking apart other people's fiction and then being able to do it to my own um so yeah it's for me that's been my education that is the reason I am the writer that I am and then I have to taste that I do is from doing something like that that's awesome and so then with given all of your wealth of experience thinking about what there might be interested in writing or pursuing a career in this what what kinds of things would you recommend as sort of like like what's some required reading or like some some okay where did it start it's a big question so required reading there's a book it's it's not that old I don't I can't tell you that the year it came out I know a lot of my friends have sort of discovered it recently it's called craft in the real world craft in the real world by uh I don't remember the author's name but there's only one book by highly highly highly highly recommend it's it is probably my favorite actual craft narrative book um I would also recommend if you struggle with it and I will say only if you struggle with it if you feel like if you did grasp maybe it's not necessary but is to look up books specifically about structure about three act structure um there is I'm trying to think save the cat that's the name of it uh save the cat is by uh oh Matthew Salasis thank you for putting that in there Julian Julian uh save the cat who wrote save the cat is Blake Snyder Blake Snyder um and yeah it is a book it's called save the cat the last book on screenwriting you'll ever need and so I'm gonna even though you may not be writing a screenplay it is actually fantastic book if you are thinking of writing commercial fiction and you want to stick to like three to five act structures things that feel like they fit into what would be a very commercial story um I I give that recommendation not to say that this is how you need to write books because I actually don't write any of my books with a normal structure uh anger is a gift and especially each of us a desert like so for example anger is a gift one of the things that I've gotten feedback on that frustrates people is that it's not the traditional heroes narrative in that the character doesn't get everything that they actually wanted and saves the day at the end even though there is some form of a victory at the end and people are frustrated by that and that is me eschewing the sort of western idea that stories have to end in this certain way where the bow is all wrapped up or whatnot and then each of us a desert is technically circular in this way that like some people are like what is going on with this book um so I will give these recommendations and say that they are wonderful things to give you information that you may not have but they're not bibles they're not this is the only way to write when I am writing I find with short stories I find something like save the cat to be an incredible resource of like I need to knock out the story and he needs to have beginning middle end how do I do a three act structure in three thousand four thousand words and that will help me sort of pare down the story so aside from acquired reading some things that have helped me so I now have a part of my process and I figured it out by the second book I used to be the kind of writer who was wouldn't outline would just it definitely did this with the book that I wrote when I was living along each is I just just sat down a row and just kept going and going didn't really plan anything uh I just didn't know I had anxiety that's a terrible way to do that because the unknown is what triggers my anxiety and so I would just write and write and get stressed out like why do I not know what's happening I think of a terrible writer and so I now outline everything I figure out story beats beforehand because it works better for me I will not say that outline is for everyone but it is it is how my heart works it's how my brain works but I would say the coolest bit of sort of writing process that's been a huge help for me is that I now do a thing that's called a zero draft everyone's heard of a first draft it's the first thing you write I write what's called a zero draft and it's called a zero draft for two reasons it's generally thought of that way because it's the draft that happens before the first draft so it's the number zero I think of it more as here is a draft that zero human beings on the planet will ever see and I will write to just get the story out of my head and get it onto the page because I like to think of that draft that no I don't show it to my agent my editor doesn't see it so I don't have as much he's the word thing I don't have as much hesitation because I'm like I can fix it later it doesn't matter that these words are terrible or this sentence doesn't work where this is clunky or I'm skipping over things the big thing for me that's important is just getting the story under the page because I like to think of it as when I am doing a zero draft I have taken the puzzle the box that it's in opened it and all I've done is dump all the pieces onto the table what all the versions are after that the first draft second draft however many drafts it takes the revision it's putting together the pieces I would say the first draft is figuring out where the edges are where are the corners and those are what are the main signposts that I've got to hit along the way of this book that I want to keep from the zero draft what are the things that I think are actually going to work these things fit in the beginning the middle the end or whatnot and then as I revise it's figuring out oh okay here's this pattern here and I know these all match all these pieces must all be together cool I've assembled this whole part of this book and I know this is it and then I'll move on and that's what writing is to me is putting together this elaborate puzzle and so I often recommend the zero draft because so many people get hung up on this idea that the first draft they have right has to be good and it has to be perfect and it has to be exactly what you imagine in your head and some people I have some friends who are fantastic first drafters I hate them I'm incredibly envious of them I'm not I'm a very sloppy first drafter so I've given into that and being like you know what that's okay write a very quick zero draft that you know no one is going to see you don't feel is self-conscious about it and then use revision to refine things and figure out the things that you want and again any advice is never a thing that is set in stone it is just what I think has worked for me and hopefully it can work for someone else yeah that's that's a good piece of advice to your advice I'm kind of curious too we have like a few minutes left I don't know if there'll be enough time for this but before I asked my question I want to see does anyone have any any questions for mark before I make it about me you can also ask your question then while someone's hopefully okay chat or the qi can drop a question so you'd mentioned oops I zoom so you'd talked about sort of dealing with anxiety and how that has affected your writing process how much of this this idea of wellness and like focusing on mental health how much how much work do you personally have to put in to sort of balance the two things you know like writing let's see it works it works better ahead no I feel like I know what you're saying too because there's like I'm immediately thinking of a few things one like how do you write a book like anger is a gift or each is a desert which tend to be pretty intense like how do you balance writing about these things while also caring for yourself yeah and then also the logistical part of it which is that writing is lonely writing is extremely difficult and super personal those are all things that can trigger you know mental health issues I will say that I feel very lucky and and and privilege to have a therapist I'm gonna recommend therapy if you can and are able how like I don't know how I would have made it through the last two years without therapy um so there's the personal angle which is there is some self-care that I do exercise when I am writing in this sort of loops back to the vulnerability conversation we had earlier there is some self-care that I have to practice if I am being vulnerable um a lot a great deal of anger is the gift is so personal and so I would frequently take breaks if I was writing a scene that felt particularly triggering of my because I have complex PTSD like Moss does so writing about it even talking about it sometimes can be very difficult so recognizing when I'm feeling anxious and when I'm writing and that it doesn't actually feel good and being like it's okay to step away and not only is it okay to step away maybe write a different scene that isn't upsetting and you can come back to this and give me yourself permission like that's okay that doesn't make you a bad writer you need to take care of yourself um there are certainly some very personal things in each of us of desert that were difficult to deal with it also relies at a great relationship with my editors and in particular when we are editing difficult passages I've never had I think we've never had a problem with it and never had to bring it up but both of my my middle grade and my middle editors have definitely been like if this is difficult we don't have to edit the scene today you can do it in a later draft or whatnot because I could tell this is very personal uh and having that open dialogue with the actual professionals in your field and then you know the other part oh boy so the past year and a half in particular has presented the new mental health struggle which is how do you create while the world is falling apart and unfortunately I didn't get a chance to have a break uh since January of last year I've written four books do I don't want to do that ever again let me just throw that out there I'm very proud of it and I'm very proud of my work ethic but I was telling a friend last night like I'm exhausted mentally physically I don't want to I don't want to have to do this and a lot of it is just coincidence a lot of us in publishing or dealing with our schedules basically piling up on top of one another especially those of us who are writing in two different age groups and so I've had to figure out how do I create and feel inspired while also dealing with everything that's been happening in the world and it is hard and part of it involves just the honesty of admitting it and being able to talk about it I think that's a huge step therapy has been a huge step setting boundaries with you know professional setting uh a big thing that I've been exercising especially these last two months is actually just saying no no I'm not going to do this event no I'm not going to do no I don't want to do this thing and I think especially for first time authors and I certainly did this in 2018 you've had this sense that if you don't say yes to everything you're never going to have a career you're never going to get another book and let me tell you now free it's been three years since my first book came out oh it's not true it is not true you do not have to do everything choose the things that make you happy choose the things that make you feel seen and respected you do not have to say yes to everything part of the reason I've had to write four books unless you're not have this because I said yes to everything and thought that that was the path forward and I could tell you for mental health reasons it's not a great it's not a great choice at the same time I want to recognize like what an amazing thing it is to be able to do that I also feel very lucky that I still get to write books uh I know it is not an easy thing to do and some people don't get a chance to write a second book and I'm at and I next month I start book seven which is so exciting and I wish I could tell all of you about these books but that's the other thing publishing this full of secrets to get a therapist so you at least have someone you could legally tell your secrets to uh it's great because they can't tell anyone my therapist is literally the only human being besides my agent who knows all of the books that are coming I'm very excited that's cool do they have to sign an NDA too uh no it's medically protected okay I have to because I've told them well I'm gonna have a meltdown when this is over be like was I supposed to tell them oh no no it's fine it's fine let's see um but I feel like that's a good good note to end on if there aren't any other questions I'll give you all one more chance thank you so much for this by the way for your like really wonderful insightful questions and I mean this is more like a discussion too that just like a back you know like one sided thing and I really appreciate that oh yeah no thank you so much for being here especially you know knowing that you know it is tough and we are trying to I think it's a time that a lot of people are reevaluating their boundaries so the fact that you chose to be here with us today just I'm so grateful thank you so much absolutely so excited to be a part of this and and have this sort of like you know I feel like very roundabout thing because I I got I feel like I got my creative start in Long Beach and and you know I've been telling friends all week how surreal this feels to me you know this is the thing that like so many artists dream of is you get your start somewhere and you have the hustle and the grind and you work so so hard and you know here I am 17 18 years later and it's finally happening not happening has happened and continues to happen and and it feels so wonderful and the fact that like those all those books behind you like I either wrote the whole book or have part like barely large parts of that it's just ah it's very it's very surreal it's very surreal so thank you thank you very much oh the last bit of business for those of you who are like super excited about the participants if you're excited about the drawing that was promised I'm gonna go ahead and probably do it after the fact so you'll get an email if you want so there was like a prize thing there were the winner will receive a pack of some books that I'm really excited about obviously you're gonna get Mark's book Duff all boys aren't blue by George Johnson so good really really good I haven't read this so no spoilers but last night the telegraph club I would grab it but it's like right over here below is a legend I'm so excited gonna be great and then my personal favorite from the was it 2019 pet so keep an eye on your emails and you might be a winner and you'll get all four we'll arrange the details for pickup at a later date so thank you all for again for being here thank you so much Mark for being here everyone have a wonderful day take care of yourselves be well and goodbye thank you everyone