This article ©TeenRC 2008 was unlocked by Lyzzy during Challenge Two of the TeenRC Read All About It Extravaganza 2009. Congratulations!
*
Recipe for writing: TeenRC chats with POLLY HORVATH
“I have been writing since I was about four. Some composers just hear music. I hear stories.”
By the age of eight, Polly Horvath had started writing books. She taught herself to type in the fifth grade and started submitting manuscripts. In high school, she was given a study in the school’s library and encouraged to write. She hasn’t stopped since.
A dash of inspiration
It’s not surprising that one of the first questions during a TeenRC online chat with Polly Horvath is about inspiration for her writing. “Who knows where a book will come from,” Horvath says, “If I knew that, I’d be in heaven and keep going back for more. Last one [was] from a magazine article.”
Everything on a Waffle, for instance, was based on reality. “It was a true story,” she recalls, “There was a restaurant where the woman made everything on a waffle.
“Some elements came from stories someone told me but some things were made up. A lot of the recipes I made up without testing... Yeah, I kind of liked the idea of the carrots and glaze recipe.”
Alas, Horvath never got to visit the restaurant. “It was closed by the time I moved to Victoria.”
Like Everything on a Waffle, Horvath’s other books have eye-catching titles like An Occasional Cow and No More Cornflakes, to the delight of her young readers. When asked how she gets ideas for such innovative titles, she simply replies, “It feels like books are written before you write them so you already get the title.”
One part technique
“When you write a book there are no rules,” says Horvath, “that’s what I like about it. I like to make up my own rules.”
Horvath herself keeps to a regular writing schedule. “I write every morning,” she tells us, “in my office in the basement... for about three hours usually.” However, she admits, “If I’m on a roll I usually make myself stop. It’s better to keep something for the next day.”
Even for Polly Horvath, writing is sometimes difficult. “I usually have one passage that I SLAVE over that kind of gels the book for me. It’s usually toward the end.”
The endings of stories aren’t always straightforward, she remarks. “Sometimes things are meant to be loose. Sometimes when you try to tie things together it feels very artificial. Generally the book tells you what to do.”
Despite the challenges, Horvath insists, “It’s also GOOD to write. Lots of good things are hard. You get better by doing it more.”
Having worked hard at writing all her life, Horvath has now more than ten books to her name. A perk must be the excitement of book touring, says a teen. “I get fancy hotels,” admits Horvath, “but what I really like is that I get door to door car service everywhere which is such a luxury.”
The talk turns to general ideas about writing. Horvath emphasizes the importance of good editing. “Writing is more rewriting than anything.”
However, when asked about collaboration with other authors, Horvath responds, “I can’t imagine working with another writer. Writing is such a lone business, and one wants such total control. Because really you are working with the book... it’s not like you make things up, they appear in your head, you actually see them. Now how can two people do that together?”
A pinch of personality
When she gets to take a break, Horvath manages to find time to relax and spend with her family.
“Dogs and horses are great... all animals, really.” she declares. “I have a horse... [and] a dog named Keena. She is a smooth collie.”
“I like to take long walks in the woods and aimless car drives,” reveals Horvath. “I like to put everyone in the car and go on backroads.”
When asked what her family thinks of her writing, she laughs, “They like it. But they’d better. They have to live with me.”
A hint of the future
Novels stay with Polly Horvath “usually until I finish. Then they are forever dead to me. I can’t stand reading my novels. I’ve read them for two years by the time they are in print.”
So it must be that this natural writer is seeking out new, unexpected ideas even now, and giving form to yet another story waiting to be told.
*
Polly Horvath’s new book, My One Hundred Adventures, targeting 9 to 12-year-old readers, was released in fall 2008 and is about “a girl who wants adventures and gets them.”
Her other works include An Occasional Cow, No More Cornflakes, When the Circus Came to Town, Everything on a Waffle, The Pepins and Their Problems and The Corps of the Bare-Boned Plane.
