Sarah Strohmeyer's Blog - Posts Tagged "harpercollins"
Why I Wrote SMART GIRLS
When my first YA book SMART GIRLS GET WHAT THEY WANT comes out June 26th it will mark the end of a journey that began four years ago when Alessandra Balzer, editor and co-publisher of Balzer + Bray at HarperCollins, had just finished THE CINDERELLA PACT and remarked to my agent that I should write YA.
I'd already been thinking the same thing and not just because my writing style tends toward the fast, flippant and emotional. Ever since high school, I'd wanted to write a book about "my people" - smart girls I knew growing up who were often pigeonholed as stuck up prudes. Seemed unfair to say the least since I remember us as extremely funny and irreverent.
My high school was huge - 750 kids in my class alone - and largely blue collar. At Liberty High in Bethlehem, PA., the students who mattered were the stars on the football field, either as players or cheerleaders. A group of girls who fought to get As in calculus were largely ignored.
I'm not gonna lie, it hurt. Let's just say (my husband hates this part) that I played a lot of Janis Ian's At Seventeen when I wasn't invited to the prom. (Which I mooned from the backseat of my friend's car.) Cliche? Maybe. But there you have it.
Fast forward thirty years and now I'm the mother of a smart girl and former Girl Scout leader to her smart girl friends. Things have improved somewhat. Kids are more accepting. The football stuff not so big. (Then again, it's Vermont). But I'm disappointed because I see familiar patterns reappearing. My daughter and her friends are pegged, just like I was, as aloof. And, in some ways, they ARE aloof. All I know is that they're not getting the full high school experience, the richness and rewards that come from those first tastes of freedom.
Why not? In theory, the smartest kids in the school should rule the roost. Carpe diem! Grasp the thistle! Go for it!
The result was my fourteenth baby, SMART GIRLS GET WHAT THEY WANT. The best part was that from the get go, Alessandra was right on board with my vision of a book triumphing smart girls. And we agreed on a few ground rules:
a) This would not be a "mean girls" book, not that I don't LOVE Tina Fey. But it's been done, it's unproductive and, in my opinion, meanness sucks out the good karma. I'll leave that to Jennsylvania who is brilliant.
b) No cliches. Because smart girls are not cliche. They are usually interesting, well-read people, though hardly goody two shoes. For example, my daughter, a junior at Bryn Mawr is a horrible reality show addict. Her equally smart friend, Thea, and she were totally addicted to Gossip Girls. What they do now in college, I don't wanna ask.
c) Boys, yes! But not for boys alone. My smart girls would not break out of their shells to get guys. If along the way a few guys happened to come their way :) then so be it. And in SMART GIRLS GET WHAT THEY WANT, there are a couple of brilliant boys who turn up the heat.
So, that's my book and that's why I wrote SMART GIRLS. By the way, my smart girl friends from high school went on to live very fulfilling lives as a dentist, a Princeton professor, a mathematician, a pharmaceutical executive, an airline pilot (oddly enough, she was the WORST driver) and a Presbyterian minister.
My daughter's friends graduated from their Vermont public high school and went to Tufts, Vassar, MIT, Hampshire, Skidmore, BU and University of Chicago. They've got exciting internships this summer in film, journalism and psychology. Mostly, they have a lot of fun with and without guys.
In other words, I'm here to testify, smart girls DO get what they want!
I'd already been thinking the same thing and not just because my writing style tends toward the fast, flippant and emotional. Ever since high school, I'd wanted to write a book about "my people" - smart girls I knew growing up who were often pigeonholed as stuck up prudes. Seemed unfair to say the least since I remember us as extremely funny and irreverent.
My high school was huge - 750 kids in my class alone - and largely blue collar. At Liberty High in Bethlehem, PA., the students who mattered were the stars on the football field, either as players or cheerleaders. A group of girls who fought to get As in calculus were largely ignored.
I'm not gonna lie, it hurt. Let's just say (my husband hates this part) that I played a lot of Janis Ian's At Seventeen when I wasn't invited to the prom. (Which I mooned from the backseat of my friend's car.) Cliche? Maybe. But there you have it.
Fast forward thirty years and now I'm the mother of a smart girl and former Girl Scout leader to her smart girl friends. Things have improved somewhat. Kids are more accepting. The football stuff not so big. (Then again, it's Vermont). But I'm disappointed because I see familiar patterns reappearing. My daughter and her friends are pegged, just like I was, as aloof. And, in some ways, they ARE aloof. All I know is that they're not getting the full high school experience, the richness and rewards that come from those first tastes of freedom.
Why not? In theory, the smartest kids in the school should rule the roost. Carpe diem! Grasp the thistle! Go for it!
The result was my fourteenth baby, SMART GIRLS GET WHAT THEY WANT. The best part was that from the get go, Alessandra was right on board with my vision of a book triumphing smart girls. And we agreed on a few ground rules:
a) This would not be a "mean girls" book, not that I don't LOVE Tina Fey. But it's been done, it's unproductive and, in my opinion, meanness sucks out the good karma. I'll leave that to Jennsylvania who is brilliant.
b) No cliches. Because smart girls are not cliche. They are usually interesting, well-read people, though hardly goody two shoes. For example, my daughter, a junior at Bryn Mawr is a horrible reality show addict. Her equally smart friend, Thea, and she were totally addicted to Gossip Girls. What they do now in college, I don't wanna ask.
c) Boys, yes! But not for boys alone. My smart girls would not break out of their shells to get guys. If along the way a few guys happened to come their way :) then so be it. And in SMART GIRLS GET WHAT THEY WANT, there are a couple of brilliant boys who turn up the heat.
So, that's my book and that's why I wrote SMART GIRLS. By the way, my smart girl friends from high school went on to live very fulfilling lives as a dentist, a Princeton professor, a mathematician, a pharmaceutical executive, an airline pilot (oddly enough, she was the WORST driver) and a Presbyterian minister.
My daughter's friends graduated from their Vermont public high school and went to Tufts, Vassar, MIT, Hampshire, Skidmore, BU and University of Chicago. They've got exciting internships this summer in film, journalism and psychology. Mostly, they have a lot of fun with and without guys.
In other words, I'm here to testify, smart girls DO get what they want!
