Ask the Author: Tara Gilboy
Answered Questions (7)
Tara Gilboy
Thank you! This is a great question! One of the things I hope readers take away from my book is the idea that most people are not "completely good" or "completely bad." I think it's easy, especially in our social media-focused culture, to create this kind of false dichotomy where others are either "good" or "bad" (or even heroes or villains). In reality, people are complex, make mistakes, and grow and learn. I hope my book inspires readers to have compassion for others and be open to giving second chances.
Tara Gilboy
Aw, thanks so much! Yes, I was definitely inspired by fairy tales as I wrote this book, especially in the early drafts. (In my very early drafts, there was actually a whole section about Sleeping Beauty that I ended up cutting.) I also spent a lot of time reading books like Jack Zipes's Why Fairy Tales Stick and Bruno Bettelheim's The Uses of Enchantment that talk about fairy tales and why we are so drawn to them. They are fascinating! I tried to also read "mentor-text" books with premises similar to mine, like Inkheart, both to see how they had handled the world-building involved when you have "a story within a story" and also to make sure I wasn't writing anything too similar to what those authors had already done!
Tara Gilboy
I read. Every day. I can't sit down and write without reading for a little while first. There's something about reading good stories that always leaves me feeling inspired.
Tara Gilboy
I'm almost afraid to answer this because I keep changing my mind and flipping back and forth between projects! I've got like three different projects going right now, but my main focus is another middle grade novel.
Tara Gilboy
Write a lot and read a lot. I had a teacher once who told me that she had worked with a lot of wonderful writers over the years, and it wasn't the most talented writers who were successful: it was the writers who were persistent and kept working at. That advice always stuck with me. There are a lot of things about my writing career that I can't control, but I can control how hard I work at it.
Tara Gilboy
Wow, that's a tough question! I love pretty much everything about being a writer. I love the brainstorming stage, when I get to come up with stories; the research stage, where I get to learn about new things; the writing and editing stages, where I figure out the story.... I guess if I had to choose just one thing as my favorite, I would say it's the friends I've made because of my writing. My very best friends are the people I workshop with and chat about storytelling with. They are the best.
Tara Gilboy
I don't know that I necessarily believe in writer's block. When I get stuck and feel like I can't write, it's often because I'm having some sort of plot problem, usually an issue with character goals. Once I do some brainstorming and tease out what's holding me up, I can get writing again.
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