Holly Schindler | Holly Schindler
Apr.07.2013
In honor of April being our "cruelest month," I'll admit, I've been pretty cruel to my characters in the past. I gave Aura, the MC of my debut YA, a schizophrenic mother (who is, as the book opens, in the midst of a downward spiral into the darkness of her illness), and I gave Chelsea,...
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Feb.13.2013
I began my full-time pursuit of publication in the spring of ’01, just after receiving my master’s. I was convinced I’d get published quickly…I’d already placed short fiction, poetry, and literary critique in a few journals while I was still a student, I’d consistently been referred to as one...
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Jan.25.2013
When I got my master’s, my mom invited me to stay home and devote full-time attention to my writing. It was my lifelong dream, after all—she offered me a roof, rent-free, and all the time I needed to get started. (Very ROOM OF ONE’S OWN, I know…)
I cleaned out the guest bedroom, turning...
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Dec.05.2012
I dig Christmas. I love the smell of pine and little white lights and decorating the house and wrapping gifts. I love carols and stockings and made-for-TV holiday flicks and carving the roast beast.
If Thanksgiving is the holiday to pause and let yourself truly feel all that you...
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Oct.22.2012
I’ve long insisted that Halloween is my all-time favorite holiday. “The wax lips!” I always say. “The candy corn! The plastic hatchets!”
But my Halloween love is actually about far more than that. Just as my love of ghost / scary stories is about far more...
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Sep.26.2012
As other bloggers have discussed at my MG blog, Smack Dab in the Middle, creative work is really tough to measure. Sure, when you finish a book—or better yet, when a book is on the shelves of a library or B&N—and you’ve got something physical to point to as you say, “This is what I’ve...
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Aug.03.2012
If I’m to define “independence” in the same way that I think many teens view the term—as a word interchangeable with “adulthood”—I’d have to say that I actually thrust independence on the main characters of both my published YAs.
Take Aura, the MC from my debut, A BLUE SO DARK. Her mother,...
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May.31.2012
You might expect me to cringe at the idea of my books hitting a used bookstore. When copies move from the shelves of second-hand stores, I won’t see a dime, after all. You might even expect me to cringe a bit at the idea of my books being housed in a library, where a single copy can be...
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Apr.18.2012
Virginia Woolf once famously insisted that in order to write fiction, a woman needed money and a room of her own.
Eleven years ago this May, that’s exactly what I got: a room of my own.
I’d just completed my master’s, and in the midst of all my fellow classmates making plans to move on to PhD...
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Mar.07.2012
We all use that word often, as writers—luck. We use it because so much is out of our hands. Because it always feels—especially during the submission process—that it takes a certain amount of luck to get a writing career off the ground.
I suppose, if anyone was ever going to say they were unlucky,...
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