Euterpe YA Event: Terie Garrison Guest Posts

Welcome back to the page! We are nearing the end of the Euterpe YA Event but it's not over til it's over! Today, we have a blog post from Terie Garrison, author of Changing Gears!

"So how did you go from writing about dragons to writing about bicycle racing?" It's a question I've been asked several times since my new book, CHANGING GEARS, was released. Funny thing is, that's not how it happened; actually, it was the other was around.

 

CHANGING GEARS is the first novel I ever wrote. Or, well, the first one I ever completed. It started life as a short story with a very different arc. I sent it round to magazines and gathered the usual assortment of rejection letters that most writers accumulate. Then I attended a one-day workshop taught by two YA novelists. One of them, upon hearing the "25-word elevator pitch" informed me, with a glimmer of delight in her eyes, "Well, the reason you can't sell it is that it's a novel."

 

Hmmm. All right. Writing novels for teens is what I really wanted to do with my life, so I took that comment to heart and turned the tale into a novel. It was a lot of fun. I was into cycling and starting to dabble in racing, so building the bike racing parts of the story was easy. The other parts were more challenging, and it took several rewrites before it arrived in its final form.

 

While I was submitting CHANGING GEARS in search of a publisher, I wrote another book, and then another. It was the third one I wrote, AUTUMNQUEST, that ended up being my first published novel. And it, of course, was followed by the other three books in the series (WINTERMAEJIC, SPRINGFIRE, and SUMMERDANSE). And then, to my delight, CHANGING GEARS finally found a home at Euterpe.

 

So, to get back to the original question, but putting it in the correct sequence, "How did I go from writing about bike racing to writing about dragons?"

 

Well, you remember how I said I was into cycling and racing? There's a common bit of advice often given to new writers: "Write what you know." I knew a lot about cycling, so it was a natural milieu in which to set a story. I didn't have to research as much as if I'd chosen something else, such as, oh, raising chickens, flying airplanes, or living in 18th-century Sweden. I was able to spend more of my creative energy on the rest of the story: characters, plot, conflict, narrative, and so on.

 

But while "write what you know" is good starting-out advice, it doesn't actually mean that literally. After all, writers of detective novels haven't committed murders (at least, one hopes not), and writers of science fiction novels haven't travelled to other solar systems (at least, not that we know of...yet).

 

To me, "write what you know" means to write about things that you're comfortable with at a basic level, so that you don't have research every little detail or else worry that you're getting it wrong, and also because when you're writing about a topic with which you're fairly familiar, you'll have enough basic knowledge to know when you need to look things up.

 

But in the end, you need to move beyond writing what you know. Once you've written a couple of books, it's time to start stretching yourself. You might choose to write about a topic that isn't in your comfort zone, or one that requires you to do more world-building than you've done before. Maybe your third or fourth book will turn out to be about raising chickens, flying airplanes, or even living in 18th-century Sweden. Or, in my case, dragons.

 

Besides, how much difference, really, is there between a bicycle and a dragon?

 

Winning the race doesn’t equal winning at life.
After receiving a classic racing bike for his birthday, Barry Sloane discovers that he has the makings of a top-notch bike racer. If things work out right, he could even go to the Olympics some day.
Of course, there are other attractions: the young women racers, and particularly Daphne Turner, who can kick Barry’s rear on a bike any day of the week.
Another discovery, though, puts him at odds with his best friend, and soon Barry has to choose between pursuing his Olympic dream and being the kind of friend he always imagined himself to be.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

AUTHOR BIO:

 

Terie Garrison rode with several San Diego bicycle clubs and was active in the Ultra Marathon Cycling Association when she lived in California. She now lives in the UK.

 

Terie’s novels are Changing Gears, AutumnQuest, WinterMaejic, SpringFire, and SummerDanse. She also co-ghostwrote Belonging, by Sameem Ali.

 

Website: http://www.teriegarrison.com

Blog: http://teriegarrison.livejournal.com