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Rosemary Graham
BIO
Rosemary Graham is the author of the young adult novels THOU SHALT NOT DUMP THE SKATER DUDE (And Other Commandments I Have Broken) and MY NOT-SO-TERRIBLE TIME AT THE HIPPIE HOTEL, both published by Viking. Her essays and commentaries have appeared in the San Francisco Chronicle, the Santa Monica Review, and on National Public Radio's "All Things Considered." She teaches English and Creative Writing at Saint Mary's College of California and lives in Berkeley with her husband and daughter.
AUTHOR TALK
 November 2005
In this interview Rosemary Graham --- author of MY NOT-SO-TERRIBLE TIME AT THE HIPPIE HOTEL --- reveals how writing THOU SHALT NOT DUMP THE SKATER DUDE acted as a way for her to break free of stereotypes and see beyond outward appearances. She describes her struggle to shape her main character, details her less-than-straightforward path to the novel's completion, and even discusses the pros and cons of today's teen blog phenomenon.
Question: What was your inspiration for THOU SHALT NOT DUMP THE SKATER DUDE?
Rosemary Graham: The character of Kelsey. Kelsey came to life in my first novel, MY NOT-SO-TERRIBLE TIME AT THE HIPPIE HOTEL. She was the pretty, happy girl envied by the narrator, Tracy. When I first introduced Kelsey in that book, I saw her much in the same way Tracy did, as the stereotypical California Girl --- blonde, beautiful, and not-so-brainy. The fact that Kelsey's family was rich made her life seem that much more charmed --- and easy --- to Tracy (and to me). But at the crisis point in HIPPIE HOTEL, when Tracy lashed out at Kelsey, Kelsey revealed herself to be a much more substantial person than people (including her creator) had assumed. I wanted to get to know that more substantial person I glimpsed in the attic of the Hippie Hotel.
Q: How long did it take you to write SKATER DUDE?
RG: Oy. I wrote the first scene with Kelsey in November of 2001, while my agent was submitting HIPPIE HOTEL to publishers. I wrote the last scene in November of 2004. Now, I did work on edits for HIPPIE HOTEL during that time, and I do have a full-time job teaching college English, but it pretty much took me three years to figure this one out. (Compared with the one year it took me to write HIPPIE HOTEL.)
Q: Why do you think this one was so hard to figure out?
RG: Because I was trying to write about Kelsey without really knowing her. The first draft of SKATER DUDE, which I was then calling "Hey, You Never Know," sucked. Big time. Despite my intentions, I didn't get beneath the surface of Kelsey. Portions of that book read as satire, like I was more interested in making fun of Kelsey than I was in understanding her.
Q: So how did you finally figure it out?
RG: I wounded Kelsey. In HIPPIE HOTEL, Kelsey makes brief mention of having just broken up with cool Skater Dude boyfriend. That little throwaway line became the basis of the Skater Dude plot. While Kelsey is back east participating in the events of MY NOT-SO-TERRIBLE TIME AT THE HIPPIE HOTEL, her bitter ex-boyfriend's making big trouble for her.
Wounding Kelsey was a huge breakthrough. Once I realized how truly vulnerable she was (as we all are), I was able to see inside this rich, pretty, and sometimes happy girl. Only after wounding her was I able to look at the world through her eyes rather than looking at her through the world's eyes.
Q: The phenomenon of the teen blog plays a big role in this book. What made you decide to write about that?
RG: Teenagers have been ruining each other's reputations forever. But with the rise of blogs, chatrooms, text messaging and IM, gossip can spread faster and further than ever. The Internet has made gossip more toxic for teens. At the same time, I think teen blogs are terrific things. I've spent some time on diaryland and livejournal, and found some amazing, beautifully written stories. Many girls find community and camaraderie through their online diaries and blogs. I imagine more than one budding writer is blogging right now.
(Click here to see the Skater Dude's blog.)
Q: Which leads to our last question. What advice do you have for aspiring writers?
RG: In the past I've always answered this question with one word: "Read." You learn to write by reading. This time I'm going to add: "Blog." Writing a diary for yourself is one thing. But writing a "diary" intended for other people to read is something else entirely. Writing for an actual audience will help you pay more attention not only to what you say, but how you say it.
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AUTHOR TALK
May 2003
 In this interview Rosemary Graham talks about her inspiration for MY NOT-SO-TERRIBLE TIME AT THE HIPPIE HOTEL, her website for the book, HippieHotel.com, her next book and her advice for aspiring teen writers.
TR: What inspired MY NOT-SO-TERRIBLE TIME AT THE HIPPIE HOTEL?
RG: The book is loosely --- very, very loosely --- based on a vacation I took with my father just after my parents got divorced. We went to this retreat-type place in a big, rambly house on Cape Cod with a bunch of other divorced parents and their kids. Doesn’t that sound like fun?
TR: Not really.
RG: Exactly. Can you imagine a worse idea for a vacation?
TR: How much of what happens to Tracy in Hippie Hotel happened to you that summer?
RG: None. Well, except for the part about waking up in the middle of the night to the sounds of squeaking bedsprings in the first chapter. I toned it down for the book, though.
TR: How so?
RG: I made it PG. In real life it was more PG-13, verging on R. The rest of the book is totally made up.
TR: Your narrator, Tracy, is a talented piano player and song writer. But she’s sort of given up on her music as the story opens. Why is that?
RG: It’s a side effect, so to speak, of her parents’ divorce and the reality of single-parent families. Tracy’s parents’ divorce is what they call "amicable." The parents still talk, but they’re both distracted by high pressure jobs and worries about Tracy’s older brother Chris, who’s acting out more obviously than Tracy is --- smoking and drinking and cutting school. And so they don’t really notice when Tracy pulls back from the thing that she loves most --- making music. I think this kind of thing happens a lot. In some divorced families, while there might be enough money for piano or dance lessons or sports teams, there isn't enough parental time and energy and attention to make sure the kids get to practices, performances, and games. That's just how it is. Tracy can’t rely on her parents to make sure she keeps up the piano. She’s got to find her way back to that piano bench on her own.
TR: How did you come up with the other girl characters in the book, Beka and Kelsey?
RG: Tracy’s a little stuck, emotionally, holding most of her feelings inside. We learn in passing that her mother struggles with depression. Tracy isn’t quite at that level, but she may be headed there. I wanted to present her with some other emotional possibilities. Even though they both seem so different from Tracy --- Beka’s the Angry Girl, Kelsey's the happy California Girl --- Tracy has more in common with them than she can see. Like Beka, Tracy has stuff to be angry about, but unlike Beka, Tracy doesn't acknowledge her anger. Instead, she takes things out on herself by eating and neglecting her music. Kelsey, on the other hand, is someone who’s quite comfortable in the world. Kelsey’s open, easy way with boys, for example, is a mystery to Tracy, who can barely utter a word in the presence of a boy she likes. Hanging out with Kelsey and watching Kelsey in action encourages Tracy to venture outside of herself.
TR: Like when Tracy meets Kevin, the skate-boarding, guitar-playing dude in a Pilgrim costume?
RG: Exactly. Tracy’s first impulse, when she meets Kevin, is to follow all that how-to advice from the magazines. But instead of helping her connect with this guy --- who really does seem like a good match for her, and who does really seem interested in her --- those scripts just get in the way. It turns out they aren’t any help when it comes to actual communication with a living, breathing boy.
TR: Tell us about the Hippie Hotel website. Did you design it?
RG: I have no design skills. But the idea was mine. I wanted to bring Farnsworth House, a.k.a. The Hippie Hotel, to life, but in a way that would still leave a lot to the imagination. We set it up as a tour, narrated by Tracy. You can peek into the rooms, see the beds where she and Kelsey and Beka sleep, strewn with their stuff. But you don’t see the actual characters. We wanted to leave that to the reader’s imagination. I hired an artist to do the drawings, Jamie Kidson, who’s a former fasion designer. She did a great job. And she pointed me toward her step-sister, Susan Bein, who did the animations and the pop-up text. Susan teaches web animation at Carmel High School, and a couple of her students helped with the site. They’re the guys winking at you from the framed pictures over the piano in the parlor. I love that.
TR: What’s next for you?
RG: I’m working on a second novel, this one from the point of view of Kelsey.
TR: A sequel to Hippie Hotel?
RG: Well, not really a sequel in the proper sense, because it doesn’t continue with all the characters, just Kelsey. It focuses on Kelsey’s efforts to change her image when she goes back to school in the fall. Because she’s rich and pretty and blonde, people tend to assume things about her --- that she’s shallow, for example, or only interested in her social life. She decides to challenge herself, and everyone else’s idea about her, by going out for the school newspaper, which is run by her school’s super achievers.
TR: What advice do you have for aspiring teen writers?
RG: Read. A lot. In my career as a college English professor, I’ve noticed that the best writers are always the kids who have been life-long readers. It’s not exactly osmosis, but something like that does happen when you spend a lot of time with the written word. It sinks in. You know how sentences, paragraphs, and essays work. If you read a lot of stories, you’ll absorb story structure, too. Take creative writing classes and learn to look at your own work objectively. Good writers revise a lot. What you read on the page in the published novel is rarely --- if ever --- the first thing the author put down. And . . . I’d also like to say it’s never to early to start. If you want to be a writer, be a writer. You can do it right now, today.
© Copyright 2003, Rosemary Graham. All rights reserved.
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