Books > The Melting of Maggie Bean

I didn't really mean to write The Melting of Maggie Bean. Don't get me wrong--once I started, I couldn't stop, but I started almost accidentally. I was in an MFA program, nearing the completion of a creative writing degree that I wasn't quite sure how I'd use once I got it, and signed up for one of the only electives that fit with my full-time work schedule: Reading and Writing Children's Literature. I'd been reading and writing much more "grown-up," literary stories, as a good MFA student should, and thought the class would be, if nothing else, a fun cruise down Memory Lane to my childhood library. Well, it was that...and then some. Our final assignment was to write the first 30 pages of a young adult novel. Heeding the timeless advice to "write what you know," I thought back to what I knew years ago, and came up with a lengthy list that included New Kids on the Block, Kirk Cameron, Full House, Beverly Hills 90210, books, sleepovers...and chocolate. Deciding that Luke Perry had already received enough attention, I zeroed in on the next-sweetest topic, and immediately pictured a young girl with brown hair and dimples standing in a drug store candy aisle, spending way too much time trying to decide which bag--or bags--to take home. That initial image quickly became the first chapter, and 30 pages were written in no time at all. The assignment was complete, but I, somehow, was not. Writing for young adults was different from writing for grown-ups. It was...fun. Writing for an older audience was fun, too, but could leave me feeling mentally wiped after an hour at the computer. Writing for a younger audience had the opposite effect; the longer I wrote, the more engaged I became, and the harder it was to stop. I liked my characters. They made me laugh. And I'd always shied away from dialogue, afraid that it wouldn't sound believable, but wrote conversations between Lucy Moon (Maggie Bean's original name) and her friends as easily as if I'd just overheard the same conversations in real life. There was no reason to keep writing Lucy's story, but there was also no reason not to. So I did. I wrote an entire draft, which became my MFA thesis. In one meeting with my adviser, I suddenly had what seemed a very random thought. I presented it to her right then, and asked if she thought I could actually do anything with Lucy Moon, in the publication sense that seriously hadn't ever occurred to me. And she kind of shrugged and said, "Why not? But have no expectations." And I didn't. I bought books, researched online and wrote my very first query letter, which I sent to about ten agents. With absolutely no expectations except to wait at least 4-6 weeks, which seemed to be the average stated response time, I sat back and prepared to keep myself distracted. Two days later, I received a request for the full manuscript. More responses quickly followed. I was stunned. My little Lucy Moon, with whom I'd spent so much time simply because I liked to, was actually interesting to real publishing professionals. Just a few months after that meeting with my adviser, I signed with Writers House, home to some of my favorite childhood authors--Ann M. Martin, Paula Danziger, James Howe and others. One of my first orders of business was to rename Lucy, since her name was already taken in someone else's book. After much deliberation that quite possibly took longer than writing the entire novel, I decided on Maggie Bean. My agent and I put Maggie through the revision wringer, and finally sent her out to editors. She found her eventual home as one of the launch titles for Aladdin MIX, a new imprint for 'tweens at Simon and Schuster. My expectations might be a little higher now, simply because I want to continue to write books that young adults want to read...but the fun's still the same.