Beginner's Luck
Is Real

Paranoid Park
by Blake Nelson
(Viking)
ISBN 0670061182
Buy this book
via Amazon.com.

BEGINNER'S LUCK IS REAL.

That's the simple advice Blake Nelson gives to fledgling authors on his website, www.blakenelsonbooks.com.

And he should know. After bailing out of law school and rattling around New York City and San Francisco writing and performing poetry, Nelson eventually made his way back to his native Portland, Oregon. There, he wrote his first young adult novel, Girl, in 1993. Simon & Schuster picked up the unsentimental coming-of-age story in 1994; Hollywood put it on the big screen in 1999, starring Dominique Swain, Sean Patrick Flannery and Summer Phoenix.

Since Girl, Nelson's published two titles for adults, Exile (Scribner, 1997) and User (Versus, 2001), plus four young adult and mid-grade novels that explore teen life with unflinching honesty and accuracy, The New Rules Of High School (Viking, 2003), Rock Star Superstar (Viking, 2004), Prom Anonymous (Viking, 2006) and Gender Blender (Delacorte, 2006).

His latest YA, the dark psychological thriller, Paranoid Park (Viking), hits the bookshelves in September.

I have no idea where I got the courage to do this.

As I was thrown out, I yelled: "My name is Blake Nelson!" Lish yelled back: "Don't worry, I'll remember you!" He accepted the next batch of poems I sent to him and I was in many issues of The Quarterly after that. Lish was a very influential editor for me. He cut my stuff down to its barest minimum, as he had done to Raymond Carver. I was already a "minimalist," but he made me more so. I really loved him, but, unfortunately, he became the victim of his own fame and eventually fell out of favor. He was not the last of my celebrity editors, though. There was more fun to come.

AUTHORLINK: I read that Girl was rejected 40 times. How did you hang in there after the tenth, twelfth, twentieth rejection?

NELSON: Girl started off as kind of a monologue-style, spoken word thing. I don't know what it was. It was like a big long poem.

I wrote it in Portland. I read it at this little open mike cafe, one chapter every week. People seemed very interested in the story and the characters, they would ask me what was going to happen next. That's when I knew I had something.

When I finished it, I started off sending it to agents. Then editors. Nobody bit. So then I moved back to New York thinking maybe that would help. Finally a magazine editor recommended me to a top agent. Since I was recommended, this agent took it more seriously than the other agents, and he sent it around. Nobody bit again!!!

I remember at one point thinking I might have to re-write it. At another point I think I gave up and figured it would never come out. But you do whatever you have to. Like getting thrown out of Lish's office. You have to find a little crack somewhere and then you have to slither through it.

AUTHORLINK: For you, that crack was Sassy magazine, which put excerpts of Girl in front of a national readership. And then the publishers came knocking?

NELSON: At this time, there was one magazine in America that was just dead-on cool in every way, and that was Sassy. Part of the problem with Girl was it was so current and so West Coast, none of the editors in New York understood it. But the people at Sassy would, I knew. They understood everything.

So I sent a small part of it to editor Christina Kelly, and, naturally, she "got it" and bought it immediately.

When that part came out, about 30 letters came in from readers. Thirty letters isn't that much, but every single one of them asked where they could buy the book. I immediately took these letters to the last remaining editor who was interested, the infamous Judith Regan. She was on the fence, but when she saw the letters, she bit.

So then I had my first book deal. Wow, was I excited! But then Judith Regan quit and left and then I was stuck in the weird limbo of no editor. I compounded the problem by fleeing to Prague because I had heard Hemingway moved to Paris when his first book was coming out.

So Girl sort of arrived in the world like an orphan. There were no parties, no editors pushing it, no publicity. It just appeared.

I didn't even see it until two months after publication when I arrived back in New York and went to Tower Books and found it. I wasn't even sure what it was going to look like. People have told me that the girl on the cover is Judith Regan, which is certainly possible. But I don't know if this is true.

NELSON: The movie people paid a person to read all the reviews in Publisher's Weekly and if anything interesting showed up to cut it out and send it to them. So that's what happened. The Girl review wasn't even that spectacular, but it was interesting.

I didn't do anything for the movie, really, I was focusing on my next book. I was always very surprised when the movie stuff kept moving forward. People would call and say, "We're doing the music." I'd be like, "Really?" I was shocked when I got the call that they had started shooting.

I thought the movie was okay, not great, but interesting in some ways. I only watched it once, years after it came out. I don't know why I was so afraid of it. I often joke that my favorite part is when it says: BASED ON THE BOOK BY BLAKE NELSON

AUTHORLINK: You're a year or two beyond your teens, I'm guessing - why do you write about and for teenagers?

NELSON: I just really like that stage of life. And I love that there's a whole genre of it. That's why I moved over to become a YA writer. If you're an adult writer they let you write one coming of age story in your career. If you're a YA writer, you can make a whole career out of writing coming of age stories.

AUTHORLINK: How do you nail those teen voices in your books? Do you hang out with teens? Eavesdrop?

NELSON: I never hang out with teens if I can help it, they make me feel old. But I do eavesdrop. I also read a lot of stuff by them, online journals etc. I don't know why I can do teen voices so well. I'm not a particularly talented mimic. I guess a lot of it is the way I talk naturally. People look at me funny when I address them as "dude."

"I did a lot of reading
of skateboard stories to get
the skateboarding stuff right."
—NELSON

NELSON: I was thinking of Gus Van Sant when I wrote it. I love the doom and gloom of Portland, and I love the street kid scene there. I love the way the west is still a kind of frontier in that way. All of which are Van Santian aesthetic principles in my mind.

Then I set up the skateboarder kid and his dilemma, much of which I stole directly from Crime and Punishment. I did a lot of reading of skateboard stories to get the skateboarding stuff right. I even got a skateboard and fell on my ass a couple times.

Skating wasn't a big thing when I was a kid, but if it had been I would have been all over it. An isolated sport where you practice all day to learn one tiny trick. That's me. That's kind of what writing is like.

AUTHORLINK: The entire book is written as a letter. Did you conceive it that way, or did the format evolve as you began writing?

NELSON: I think about two thirds of the way through I realized the main character was in love with [classmate] Macy, and that this whole thing could be a confession of sorts to her. I love how she is his only confidante. That's how kids really are it seems to me. They only really trust each other. Right now, parents try so hard to be their kids' best friends. But they can't be. The only people you ever really reveal yourself to totally is your peers.

AUTHORLINK: The ending is a total surprise. I can imagine the main character doing the "right" thing and confessing, or, more likely, doing the "wrong" thing and remaining silent. Why did you leave it so open-ended?

NELSON: That was the coolest part as a writer. I didn't know what he was gonna do!! All I can say about the end is that I let the character make the decision and he did. I did not decide.

AUTHORLINK: It occurs to me that we never know the main character's name in Paranoid Park. Yet we feel as if we really know him. Was that a conscious decision to keep him anonymous?

NELSON: Yes, early on I saw that I might be able to write the whole book without revealing his name. I love when little challenges present themselves. Like in Girl, there is no dialogue. When cool little gimmicky things like that seem possible, you know you've got a good book.

NEL SON:They just come. They just walk in the door. I have no idea where they come from. I know I tend to like them all. Even the bad guys.

AUTHORLINK: What's your writing process? What inspires a story? How much input do editors have in your writing?

NELSON: I just go to work every day. I wake up, make coffee and turn on my computer. I work about six hours every day. I throw away TONS of material. That's the main thing with me. I try a lot of different stuff to find one thing that I really like.

I have gotten better at dealing with editors as I have gone along. Not one word of Girl was changed, which I was happy with at the time. Now I like more input. Like with my Viking editor, Catherine Frank, we have such a calm and intelligent relationship -she's never thrown me out of her office or put herself on the cover of my books - that it always improves the work and never hurts it.

AUTHORLINK: How many different projects do you have going at any moment? Do you write with the intent to publish?

NELSON: I sometimes have two things going. Not more. I don't do any magazine writing anymore, or poetry, and I've never written a screenplay. I may someday, but for now, I just think it is such a privilege to get to write a book you know is going to be published. I think every other kind of writing is inferior. To work on something that is all yours, that will have your name on it, that is a complete reflection of you at that time. It's a gift, and also a lot of responsibility, and you really want to give it everything you have.

AUTHORLINK: Do you have any tips for aspiring authors? I love your "beginner's luck" advice on your website…

NELSON: Beginner's luck definitely happens, so I would tell aspiring writers to take themselves seriously and swing for the fences on that first book. Later in your career you will be a better writer, but there's a certain youthful recklessness that can really work to your advantage the first time out. You're so dumb you don't know that you can't write an American Classic. And then next thing you know, you have.