This week, we had the pleasure of interviewing YA author Bryony Pearce! What would you do if an innocent competition suddenly turned deadly? Would you be able to do what it takes to survive? Bryony asks these questions and more in her latest novel Savage Island. Check out what she has to share with us about inspiration, writing, and publishing!
Tell us about your newest story, Savage Island. Where did you draw your inspiration from?
I draw inspiration from all around me, in this case it was a conversation with my father-in-law. He was telling me about a geocaching expedition and, as he was talking, I thought, what if you opened a box and inside was a human finger?
It all went from there—why would anyone carry on with the course? How could I isolate them/take the authorities out of the equation? Who set up the boxes and why? What is in the final box? Answering all those questions made the story come together.
Savage Island is only one of many books you have published. How long does it take you to flesh out an idea and get it onto paper, start to finish?
It varies, of course, but nowadays I would say about a year from conception to the end of the first edited draft. I’m a real planner, so once I have the story idea I write a synopsis, then a chapter by chapter outline, then I fill it out, then edit.
What drives you to write?
Like many writers, I suppose, it’s a bit of an addiction. It’s not just that I love to write (because I do), but that if I don’t I get grumpy and twitchy; stories build up and demand release. I’m certain that even if I wasn’t published I’d still be writing.
At what point in your life did you realize writing was your passion?
About the time I realised that books were written by real people! As soon as I realised that ‘writer’ was a profession you could actually have, it was what I wanted to do. I took a few detours along the way, but I’m very happy to say that I got there in the end.
What challenges have you faced along the way?
Many of the challenges have been self-imposed. I lost my self-belief for a long time and ended up working as a research manager, until I was able to get over my feeling that I was never going to be able to write well, and started coming up with stories again. A lot of becoming a writer was about committing to it: organising my job so that I could have a couple of days a week writing, getting up at 5am when the children were tiny so that I could have a couple of hours writing when they were still asleep, taking my laptop into the hospital during my operation so that I could have a week writing while I was recovering (the nurses couldn’t believe their eyes!). It’s about pushing through that feeling that you aren’t good enough and committing to finishing that story.
Of course there have been other challenges: some bad choices along the way, a publisher that closed down …
If you could go back in time and change one thing through your process into becoming an author, what would it be?
As I say, I made some poor choices, and I’d like to go back and change a few of them, but then, how do you learn if you make no mistakes? Life is a long journey and I do love to learn; some lessons are just harder than others to take. And who knows what those changes might result in—if Harry Potter and the Cursed Child taught us anything, its that time travel is a huge mistake! Perhaps changing one thing would mean I’d be a Financial Consultant now (shudder).
Perhaps I would tell myself to slow down a bit. I think some of the mistakes I’ve made have been the result of rushing, not thinking things through, pushing edits through too fast. I’ve learned that the publishing industry moves slowly, so why rush?
What are you working on now?
I’m in the process of editing a historical novel, set in the Cotswolds in the Seventeenth Century. It’s very psychological, about a teen friendship that goes badly wrong. When the girls fall out one accuses the other of being a witch, with terrible consequences.
Do you have any long term goals or larger projects you look to finish?
I have a couple of other novels lined up once I’ve finished with my stand-alone historical. These are story ideas that I’d like to turn into series fiction: an urban fantasy and a MG fantasy both of which, if they go in the direction I’d like, have potential for larger story arcs which could take several novels to tell.
What would you tell a novice writer looking to pursue a similar career path?
Commitment is so important—finish your story, even if you stop believing in it, because no half-written book ever got published. Knowing you have it in you to actually finish a novel is half the battle. Resilience is the other half: facing rejection and fighting on, taking criticism, applying it and moving forward. Trust your gut and tell the story that you need to tell.
Also use a literary consultancy to check your work, enter competitions and believe that you will see your work on a shelf someday.
