Students learn about author, writing techniques

Intermountain Catholic

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Author Laurie Halse Anderson is very animated as she talks about her life and her books. She is an organic gardener as well. IC photo by Christine Young

SALT LAKE CITY — Author Laurie Halse Anderson visited Judge Memorial Catholic High School in March to talk about her books and writing.

"I am from New York State, not New York City, so I talk really really fast," said Anderson. "I want to talk about how I turned into an author.

As she showed slides of herself as a small child tearing through a book, she said, "I was an adorable child, but I was also a confused child. There are no photographs of me looking right at the camera, I am always looking off into the distance. Often because I was confused, other times because I was using my imagination.

"The reason I am an author is because I hear voices in my head. I have a very strong imagination," said Anderson. "So when I was young, I was always making up pretend situations."

Anderson said she was tall and always in the back row, so that allowed her to hide books inside her textbooks so she could read, or hide a notebook, which allowed her write while the teacher was talking.

"Childhood was nice, but middle school was a challenge largely because of what was going on in my family," said Anderson. "I was in different schools in sixth, seventh, eighth, and ninth grades. Then I hated high school, partly because my family was in nuclear melt down. My dad is an alcoholic, and when I was in eighth through tenth grade, he was really kind of crazy. He lost his job, we had no money, they turned off the electricity a lot, and it was not fun.

"If any of you have family members struggling with substance abuse, my heart is with you," said Anderson. "It is so confusing, especially when you are young and you look up to your parents. Then you get as tall as your parents and you still need their help, and they lose their minds, and you say now what do I do?"

So what Anderson did, was she went to Denmark two weeks after her junior year.

"I got my passport and I left the country," said Anderson. "I strongly advise you do that if you are having a hard time. I was an American Field Service exchange student. I spent 13 months living on a pig farm in Denmark. That switch was much better than high school, and the best thing about living on a pig farm is bacon - all you can eat.

"The best part of my experience in Denmark was the family I lived with was sober and sane, and really nice people," said Anderson. "I clearly needed some time to mature. I learned how to speak Danish, work on a farm, went to school, and did a lot of growing up. I started to discover self-discipline and self-motivation. I came back to the states a much happier person than I was when I left.

"When I came back I went to the college that made me who I am today. I am an extremely proud graduate of Onondaga Community College, in Syracuse, N.Y.," said Anderson. "I had to pay for college myself. I lived at home, and attended small classes with professors who knew my name. That is what I needed. I did so well that I got a scholarship at Georgetown University in 1981, and graduated in 1984. I avoided taking English and creative writing. I majored in Linguistics. I avoided English because I did not like the way they made us analyze the death out of a story because sometimes a good story is just a good story, and you do not need to find the symbolism."

After college, Anderson said she stumbled around and became a newspaper reporter for a local newspaper, and the Philadelphia Inquirer. She then started to write picture books for children. She sent hundreds of manuscripts and received hundreds of rejection letters.

"I earned every one of them because I did not pay attention in English in high school," said Anderson. "I was making the number one mistake that writers make all the time. I thought if I were truly talented then the wonderful pros that came out of my fingers in the first draft of the story, would be good enough to be published. What you need to remember is - nobody writes a great first draft. So revise and make it better. When I started to revise my work and make it better, they stopped sending me rejection letters, and started sending me contracts and checks.

"I like to write novels for teenagers set today, but I also like to write stories about our history because I love American history," said Anderson. "My book "Twisted" I wrote from a guys point of view because as I traveled around I learned how confused boys are about girls, and just how many middle, high school and college students had to deal with bullying, and how many thousands of guys were mournful because they did not have their fathers in their lives either physically or emotionally. I did not intend the book to be about suicide, but that is where it went.

"Winter Girls," is about anorexia. For some reason my readers started to write to me about their eating disorders and the reasons they were cutting," said Anderson. "I did not want to write about this because I had my own bad eating habits.

"Ten to 15 percent of people with eating disorders in America are male," said Anderson. "Forty percent of high school football players have binge eating disorders. And the reason I wrote the book is anorexia has the highest premature death rate of any mental illness. Eating disorders are not really about food. Eating is the surface issue. There is a lot of pain underneath. More people die from complications of anorexia each year than die from depression. That startled me, so I wrote a book about the underlying pain.

"Most of all in this book, I wanted people to know what it feels like to be really alone," said Anderson. "The girl has to hit bottom and then help herself up through a struggle.

"If there is one thing that connects every single book you will read from me, it is hope," said Anderson. "I believe in light, love, and the power of change and growth. From the things that I have gone through, and seen some friends go through, I believe there is never despair."