{"id":1369,"date":"2011-11-08T14:48:41","date_gmt":"2011-11-08T19:48:41","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.old.caraghobrien.com\/book\/?p=1369"},"modified":"2011-11-08T14:51:42","modified_gmt":"2011-11-08T19:51:42","slug":"on-dedicating-prized-to-nancy-mercado","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.caraghobrien.com\/book\/prized\/on-dedicating-prized-to-nancy-mercado\/","title":{"rendered":"On Dedicating Prized<\/em> to Nancy Mercado"},"content":{"rendered":"

This entry is cross-posted on MacTeenBooks<\/a> and MacKids<\/a> today.<\/em><\/p>\n

Nancy Mercado and I talk to each other rarely.\u00a0 We\u2019ve had fewer than a dozen phone calls over the past three years, and we\u2019ve met in person three times total.\u00a0 In a way, I know my editor most vividly as a disembodied voice in the margin of my manuscripts, and yet, because of the focused nature of our relationship, Nan has surprised me countless times by how completely she gets how my mind works.\u00a0 It\u2019s almost uncanny, really.\u00a0 We laugh a lot, too, but almost never in the same room, at the same time.<\/p>\n

When we revise a draft together, certain ongoing exchanges take on a life of their own.\u00a0 We\u2019ve recently worked on \u201cTortured,\u201d a short story we plan to use as an experimental tie-in to The Birthmarked Trilogy<\/em>.\u00a0 Here\u2019s a screenshot showing our Track Changes comments around a particular revision.\u00a0 You can figure out who\u2019s talking even when she jumps in my red box with her caps<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>

Click to Enlarge<\/p><\/div>\n

I ended up taking her advice on that one.\u00a0 I usually take her advice, frankly, or pull my brains out trying to figure out why I shouldn\u2019t.<\/p>\n

As much as I value the small-scale editing, however, what I really cherish is the way Nan pushes me deeper into my own mind with her questions during large revisions, and how she supports when I need to take a risk.\u00a0 Prized<\/em> brings up a sensitive issue, the sort of topic that can divide my extended family and set tempers flaring.\u00a0 A character\u2019s unwanted pregnancy had been hovering at the edge of my story through eight drafts before I finally said to Nan, I don\u2019t know what to do with this.\u00a0 I thought she might advise me to drop it, which I could have done, but instead, she suggested I bring it forward.\u00a0 Face it.\u00a0 See what happened.<\/p>\n

Until that point, I had not realized how much I\u2019d been censoring myself.\u00a0 I was afraid to write something that might make people, especially people I loved, upset with me.\u00a0 I didn\u2019t think I could write well enough to be fair or true.\u00a0 Over the next weeks, grappling with the novel also involved discovering what responsibilities I had as a person and a writer, especially a writer for teens.\u00a0 Nan patiently waited me out, postponing deadlines, nudging with her questions while I hewed away, rewriting and revising, rippling the consequences of my decisions through the rest of the story.\u00a0 I trusted Nan would support me regardless of what I wrote, as long as I wrote honestly.\u00a0 The final novel feels right to me, hard but right.<\/p>\n

I know I would not have developed Prized<\/em> the way I did, nor stretched who I am quite this way, without Nan\u2019s support, and so when it came time to pick a person to dedicate Prized<\/em> to, Nan was my only choice.\u00a0 I put her name in the manuscript just before the copy edits stage and sent it in.\u00a0 When she wrote back to ask if I was sure, I was caught in a funny, awkward moment.\u00a0 She modestly said that writers usually pick family members, and I thought, Oh, no.\u00a0 She\u2019s declining.<\/em> I couldn\u2019t exactly write back and say Nan\u2019s like family to me.\u00a0 She isn\u2019t.\u00a0 Nan\u2019s like my editor to me.<\/p>\n

In the end, fortunately, I convinced her.\u00a0 Prized<\/em> is dedicated to Nancy Mercado.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

This entry is cross-posted on MacTeenBooks and MacKids today. Nancy Mercado and I talk to each other rarely.\u00a0 We\u2019ve had fewer than a dozen phone calls over the past three years, and we\u2019ve met in person three times total.\u00a0 In a way, I know my editor most vividly as a disembodied voice in the margin […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[13],"tags":[17],"class_list":["post-1369","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-prized","tag-prized-2"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.caraghobrien.com\/book\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1369","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.caraghobrien.com\/book\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.caraghobrien.com\/book\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.caraghobrien.com\/book\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.caraghobrien.com\/book\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1369"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/www.caraghobrien.com\/book\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1369\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1375,"href":"https:\/\/www.caraghobrien.com\/book\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1369\/revisions\/1375"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.caraghobrien.com\/book\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1369"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.caraghobrien.com\/book\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1369"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.caraghobrien.com\/book\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1369"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}