Blake Nelson

BIO

Blake grew up in Portland, Oregon.

His first love was books but he spent several years in his teens and twenties playing in bands.

Blake's first writing job was at Details magazine, where he wrote short humor pieces on the slacker lifestyle. His fiction remained unpublished until Sassy Magazine (cool girl magazine from the 90s) began publishing excerpts from his first novel.

These excerpts generated enough response to get his first novel GIRL published by Simon and Schuster. GIRL (1994) has since been translated into six foreign languages and was made into a feature film.

After GIRL, Blake published two more adult novels, EXILE (1997) and USER (2001). In 2003 he wrote his first Young Adult novel, (a book specifically for teens) THE NEW RULES OF HIGH SCHOOL.

Since then he has published six YA novels, NEW RULES, ROCKSTAR SUPERSTAR, PROM ANONYMOUS, GENDER BLENDER, THEY CAME FROM BELOW and PARANOID PARK, which has been made into an award winning film by Gus Van Sant.

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INTERVIEW

February 26, 2002

Blake Nelson's GIRL bridges the gap between teens and adult fiction, depicting a young girl's turmoil from several different angles. Read what Nelson has to say about teens and the influence of his own high school adventures, particularly in the classroom.

TRC: Where did the characters come from in GIRL? Are you an Andrea type?

BN: I *am* the Andrea type. I didn't realize it at first. I tried at the beginning to make Andrea a clueless mall chick, but she quickly became more of an observer (like me!) and she did what I did in high school, which is become friends with a lot of different people from different cliques and especially befriend the weirdest, most creative people.  

TRC: How and why did you --- a non-teen-age guy --- decide to write about a teen-age girl?

BN: I did it as a goof originally. It was going to be a short story called "Cybil Shaves her Head," a take off of F. Scott Fitzgerald's "Bernice Bobs her Hair." But as soon as I got a couple of the characters going I saw that this was something I could develop further and have a lot of fun with, and also a story I really wanted to tell. For me, getting involved in the indie-music scene while I was in high school was how I came of age and learned to think for myself.

TRC: GIRL vividly and unsentimentally deals with girls' interest in love matters. You run the gamut of maturity in your characters --- from girls who have never had a boyfriend to complete boy obsessions. How and why did you decide to paint crushes and high school romance from so many different angles?

BN: In a big public high school you're going to get a lot of different types. It's a fun thing to think and write about. It can also be a great source of humor.

TRC: How long did it take you to write GIRL? Did you have problems with publishers due to its possibly controversial themes?

BN: I wrote it very quickly, two months, and then another six months working on it, getting it just so. But it was a very happy time for me. I was having such fun! It was a problem getting it published. It was rejected 40 times. The brilliant editor Christina Kelly ran a couple excerpts in Sassy magazine and that helped get the publisher's interested. Most of the problem was what genre was it? YA or adult fiction? I don't really know what it is.

TRC: The teens in GIRL come off as very real and also as very worldly. Did you study teen slang and speech patterns before writing the book? Do you have any teens you use as guinea pig readers?

BN: I did no research. None. I just remembered what high school was like. And I guess in some part of my brain I have always been younger than I really am. I love high school. I think it is a great time in a person's life, an epic time, when love seems absolute and infinite and there's still room for heroism and bravery and romance. After that, everyone just gets jobs and watches TV. Also, I think teenagers are totally as smart as adults about the bigger issues. Like God and life and relationships. Adults know more details and have more experience with plumbing and how to buy things, which makes them seem smarter, but they aren't. I knew things as a teenager that I don't know any more. I think younger people tend to be more honest and probably more true to themselves. As people get older they get lazy and they go along to get along.

TRC: I am dying to know what happens after the book ends. Is there a sequel?

BN: I drafted out a sequel a year or two ago. It was pretty good, but I think I waited too long. It conceivably could still be published I suppose. But it's probably best left in my drawer.

TRC: Did you have any teacher who particularly encouraged you?

BN: Not in writing so much, but in life in general. I had a bunch of great teachers. This one woman, Mrs. Eid, who taught me in eighth grade. She was just so cheerful and indomitable and smart, smart, smart. She was tough but she loved us, even when we were doing terrible, terrible things while she was writing on the board. In high school I went to an all boys Jesuit high school and I really loved the priests. They were such odd characters. I wasn't religious myself, but I really admired their commitment. Teachers for me were all about: "How does this person live his life?" "How does he/she deal with things?" One of my teachers there was a Vietnam vet, and we used to pound on our desks and chant "war stories! war stories!" and on Fridays that's what we got. Another guy, a math teacher, used to sit with his feet on the desk and say, "What's the point of being alive? Of going to school? Of getting married, having kids?" I loved that.

TRC: Did you journal or keep a diary as a teenager?

BN: In college I kept a journal. I loved that writing style. Just telling what happened to you that day. Or writing a description of something. It was great practice. And it gave me such a feeling of freedom. Later I found Henry Rollins's books, which were often just journals of his life in his band. I loved those and used the structure of those for some of my early fiction.

TRC: What advice would you give to budding writers?

BN: It is a difficult life and if you don't really enjoy the actual act of writing don't do it. A good book on the subject is Stephen King's new ON WRITING.

TRC: Who was your favorite author when you were a teen? Who are some of your writing influences?

BN: Henry Rollins, Charles Bukowski, Henry Miller, Jack Kerouac showed me that there is a world outside the mainstream. That was really important to me when I started. Most of my other favorites are pretty normal people though: John Updike is my most favorite. He writes about normal life. He makes it so real and he's very honest, which to me is the most important thing. That's why GIRL has done well, I always think, because it's honest and heartfelt. That's really the key.

TRC: If we looked at your bedside table, what books would we find there?

BN: Right now, Stephen King's ON WRITING. Jonathan Frantzen's THE CORRECTIONS (me and everyone else). THE BROTHERS KARAMAZOV I read two years ago and it is still ringing in my head. That's the best book I have ever read.

TRC: What projects are you working on right now?

BN: I just finished my first official YA novel, called THE NEW RULES OF HIGH SCHOOL, which I love. It's about a guy who has everything --- he's smart, popular, editor of the paper, captain of the debate team --- but he's somehow still a bit of a mess. He breaks up with his perfect girlfriend and ends up friends with a weird freshman girl. It has the same nice groove as GIRL but it's a guy this time, which gives it a different vibe. It's very cool.