It’s an honor to have author/agent A.J. Paquette drop by The Writing Barn blog today for our What My Last Book Taught Me series. Joan, as she is known to friends and clients, will be leading an Advanced Writer Workshop at The Writing Barn in 2014. Check back for 
the dates for her intensive. In the meantime, go grab Rules for Ghosting, Paradox, and her latest picture book, Ghost in the House–all three books release this summer! Joan is not only a busy agent, and mom, she is a prolific writer and today she gives us the inside scoop on how an idea can change and morph over time as it becomes a book. Welcome, A.J.
What My Last Book Taught Me: Never Say Never (And Always Keep a Ghost in your Pocket)
by A. J. Paquette
I think we always remember our first “serious writing” project—that hallowed, treasured piece we first approached with tremulous optimism and naïve expectation. Not the first thing we’ve ever written, not by a long shot, but the first thing that launches a blank document with that rock-solid determination: This time, I am going to write to get published.
For me, that “book” was a darling little piece titled It’s a Ghost’s Life. It began like this:
As far as Dahlia Day could tell, she had been dead for almost exactly ten years. This did not concern her particularly. She had been young when it happened, and had no memory of her life before. And for this particular moment, on this sunny Friday in June, the only thing really on her mind was perfecting her first garden.
Now, I use the word “book” loosely because this beautiful disaster was a whopping 9,000 words long, and a tantalizing tangle of contradictions: It was good enough to garner both interest and enthusiastic personal rejections; it was not, however, even close to good enough for publication. Great characters—weak plot. Great writing—major lack of complexity. In short, great start—nowhere near finished.
That was in 2004. After an unsuccessful first run, I reluctantly tied up my rejections in a metaphorical bow and put Dahlia in a drawer. In 2006, I pulled her out again, revised, spiffed things up a bit. The manuscript, now titled Dahlia’s House of Mystery, was still in the 9000-word range. And still found itself to be a no-go. I kept at it. In 2007, Dahlia and the Ghosting of Sprightly Manor rang in at 16,000 words. Nope. Years passed. I thought Dahlia-of-the-many-titles was probably a lost cause.
Yet she stayed with me, as those stories most deeply felt will tend to do. In 2011 my first novel was released, Nowhere Girl, published by Walker/Bloomsbury. I came to the point of planning my next book with them. What would it be? Guess who was the first character to pop into my head?
This time, I knew that if Dahlia could be saved at all, it would require drastic measures. I took a good hard look at the manuscript as it then was, and considered my options. And I ended up with a mental list that looked something like this:
Story Strengths:
- Terrifically well-developed characters
- Fun voice and humorous tone
- Interesting and hooky storyline
- Great setting
Story Weaknesses:
- Chapter-book-length story with a middle-grade storyline and protagonist
- Weak, linear plot
- In brief: Not Enough There
I decided to open a new document and rebuild Dahlia’s story from the ground up. But I also decided that I didn’t want to lose all those great plus aspects of the original. What I needed, I realized, was twofold: A more complex resolution to Dahlia’s story. And a strong secondary storyline.
The solution to the second problem was the easiest: Oliver was already a character in the original story—a living boy who moves into the house in which Dahlia-the-ghost is trapped. In my new revision, Oliver received not only a strong storyline, goal, and plot arc of his own—but also his own separate point of view. And his own antagonist. With this, the entire story fell into place. The two parallel plots echoed each other perfectly: All Dahlia wants is to leave her manor house. All Oliver wants is to be able to stay there. But of course, nothing is that simple for either of them.
The expansion of Oliver’s storyline and the layering in of the second antagonist all helped with the complexity of Dahlia’s story. Beyond that, I worked at it. No short-cuts here! I plotted a serious outline, adding more secondary characters and deepening the mystery. From its original straightforward resolution I added twists and turns. And the end result, to my enormous delight, was embraced whole-heartedly by my publisher.
Dahlia’s final story—and now Oliver’s, too—is now titled RULES FOR GHOSTING (clocking in at a whopping 60,000 words!), and is now out from Walker Books for Young Readers. Here is the new first paragraph:
Dahlia was dead, but the sunflower was not. Not yet, anyway. It still looked shimmery and only half-visible, just like all other living things. But the stem was bent and broken, and drooped down from the rest of the plant. Soon it would expire—right into Dahlia’s waiting hands. Then she would carry the new ghost flower to her garden.
If the sweetness of an end result is measured by its output of time, sweat, and tears, then RULES FOR GHOSTING is probably my crowning achievement. It’s been nearly a ten-year-journey to bring this spunky undead character to life on the page. But it’s a process I wouldn’t exchange for anything.
Honestly? It’s a Ghost’s Life had a lot to recommend it. It wasn’t a terrible book. But it’s a fact that it is nothing compared to what the book has become now. Some stories need time to germinate and grow in the dark. To rush them out to publication would be to lose a vital part of the process, to end up with a book which, while okay, is nothing but the ghost of what it might have been.
It was a long journey to publication for this little ghost of my heart. But, in looking back, I wouldn’t change a thing.
A.J. Paquette has been writing stories since early childhood. She and her sister would spend hours creating masterpieces of stapled paper and handwritten words, complete with pen-and-ink covers and boxed illustrations.
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