Young Adult Author Patricia McCormick and I during our interview at Harding University November 14, 2009.

Patricia McCormick is author of several young adult novels: Cut, My Brother's Keeper, Sold, and her latest addition Purple Heart. Her works have also appeared in other collective works, her short story "Orange Alert" has appeared in Up All Night. Her books have been National Book Award nominees. Critics have described her writing as "breathtaking in both its simplicity and attention to detail... stunning." She has been an inspiration to many young adults, including myself. I am very pleased to present to you an interview I had with her at Harding University on November 14th:

Patricia McCormick Interview

11/14/09

Harding University (Searcy, AR)

Dustin Hood: How were you inspired to write Purple Heart?

Patricia McCormick: I was inspired by participating in a peace march with veterans from the Iraq war and the Vietnam War and the American Friends Service Committee, the Quakers. They put out a pair of boots for every soldier killed in the war, and each pair of boots had a name tag with the soldier's name, his age, and his hometown. The point of the exhibit was to demonstrate the human cost of the war. They also had a pile of civilian shoes, showing the amount of civilians that have been killed in the war. I was standing there, putting that exhibit together and saw this pair of little red sneakers and I could instantly imagine, or see, a little boy being injured or being shot. That image really haunted me and wouldn't let go of me until I figured out how such a thing could happen.

DH: The vision that you had, how consistent was with Purple Heart?

PM: The image where the boy was getting shot in the alleyway was almost identical to how I saw it in my imagination that first time.

DH: Do you think the war is a common misconception with the general public, like they don't understand the impact of the war or what it stands for?

PM: I think one of the biggest issues of this war is that few people are fighting it. In comparison with the general population, a very small group of families whose brothers and sisters and uncles and fathers are going over there to perform this sacrifice. Often these families will serve in multiple tours. As a result, others don't have that much invested in the war. A lot of us see a picture in the front of the paper and it feel like it's just a foreign relations problem. However, as far as families, it's an every day worry that every time the phone rings, or every time they hear about the battle, they have to worry if it's affected somebody they love.

DH: What were your views on the war prior to writing Purple Heart? Have those views changed?

PM: My views on the war change all the time. I was very sad when our country invaded Iraq, because I didn't think that that was the right way to go. Then later to find out that the weapons of mass destruction did not exist was very frustrating, especially when you think of the people that lost lives as a result of that false story. How they changed? I feel an enormous sense of awe for the soldiers who are there, for the sacrifices they are making, for their bravery, for the decisions that they have to make on a split-second notice, the pressure that they're under. As we are preparing for the prospect of sending more troops to Afghanistan, my feelings go back and forth every day. Sometimes I feel that it's just not worth it. Other times I feel like if we leave, all of the gains that were made there for human rights will be lost and that the people that lost their lives there, if we'll wonder if that loss of life was in vain.

DH: To research for Purple Heart you interviewed families of soldiers. How was that experience for you?

PM: It was very emotional. When I went to visit the families, I thought it would be a short visit, like an hour or two, and it ended up lasting all day. The families wanted to show me scrapbooks and photo albums and yearbooks and show me their son's bedroom and go to the high school and go to the cemetery. What touch me the most was how much they wanted their sons to be known and understood. I thought that they might feel like I was intrusive, but it was just the contrary, they really, really want their stories told. And that's where I struggled when writing Purple Heart. I didn't want to just pull a bit from this person and a bit from that person. I wanted to tell each of their stories.

DH: In the novel, the soldiers are portrayed as cracking often racy jokes or playing "who's-hotter" games. What is the significance of this?

PM: Part of it is just realistic. That soldiers do crack a lot of jokes and engage in a lot of black humor as a way of coping with what is going on around them, but the nature of their humor is often about who's a man and who's not a man, trying to puff up their sense of masculinity and sound like men, especially when they don't necessarily feel like men, especially when the boys are 18 years old.

DH: Do you think that the soldiers who are 18 years old are ready for what's over there?

PM: I'm not sure anybody is ready for what's over there, but I especially worry for young people who don't have the life exposure and some of the judgement that someone older might have. I did some research and it shows that more than half of the deaths, significantly more than half of the deaths, at least the deaths in Iraq, are 18, 19, 20, and 21-year-olds.

DH: What is the message you want readers to grasp when they read Purple Heart? What was your purpose for writing it?

PM: I didn't really have a particular message, because I think that no body likes to be preached to, no body likes to open a book that they feel that the author has an agenda that they are trying to put across, either subtly or directly. My hope was to open up a conversation about the war and bring it to kids in high school, who are around the cuff of being old enough to enlist and to have a conversation about the role of civilians in this war and to have a conversation about the nature of this war. In particular that there is so many "sneak attacks" of these road-side bombs, which nobody can be prepared for, for which there is nobody to shoot at after it's happened. So to take it beyond the headlines and to talk about what it is like for the loved ones at home waiting for the phone call to come, to look at all the facets of being in war and not pass judgement, one way or another, of this particular war.

DH: When you were interviewing families, what was the moment that your views shifted to the awareness of the risks that young people are taking?

PM: I can't say that there was one particular moment, it was something that gained on me gradually, reading about the facts, the situations, the exact incident that killed somebody's boy and reading about the conditions there and trying to bring them to life. For example, we know that it is very hot there, but to write about it, you can't just say it's very hot, you have to show how hot it is, how confusing it is. When I tried putting myself in their shoes, that's what changed my feelings.

DH: If you had an opportunity to re-write Purple Heart what would you change?

PM: I don't know what I would change. I don't think that is necessarily my best book and I can't put my finger on exactly why that is. One hunch that I have is that it is not told from first-person, it's told from a camera at a bit of a distance looking at all three of these characters. It might have been more effective if I would've just wrote it from one person's point of view.

DH: How has the feedback from soldiers, or their families, been?

PM: I haven't gotten a lot of feedback. There's a guy who helped me with the book, he fact checked it. He went through every single line to make sure that it was accurate and he said to me "This really reminded me of me and my buddies." That was the highest compliment that I could imagined. I have heard from many families who liked it and want to send it to their loved ones in Iraq.

DH: Just a ball-park estimate, how many copies of Purple Heart have been sold thus far?

PM: I don't know. I don't find out until six months after the publication date. But my agent said that books are generally not selling very well, especially about the war. All the different movies that came out about the war in Iraq didn't do too well. So it's hard to predict. I think it's in the hands of librarians and English and Social Studies teachers, they have a big impact. It's not so much as how many copies are sold, because if you buy one copy and put it in a high school library, that could mean 300 readers.

DH: Is there anything you find particularly challenging when writing?

PM: With Purple Heart there are two things that were particularly challenging: One trying to adopt the male persona, and the other trying to write about, or replicate, a world that I haven't seen. For my other books, I have gone to the locations and done research so I know it really feels authentic. But this was trickier, because I obviously couldn't go to Iraq.

DH: Out of all of your books, which one was more fun to write?

PM: Cut was probably was most fun because I was really naive and unencumbered by any expectations and really unaware about what to expect. The idea of doing it in privacy and without any idea of expectations was a lot of fun.

DH: What was your feedback like from Cut? Did you get any kind of reader feedback like "this book changed my life" or anything like that?

PM: I get e-mails all the time! The book has been out for ten years and I still get e-mails every week from people telling me how much the book helped them. Occasionally people will say it caused them to go get help. I get e-mails from mothers saying, "I didn't understand what my daughter was doing and now I do." And from librarians saying, "I had a kid who was cutting and I didn't know how to help until this book came along." That's incredibly gratifying. In the very beginning, I heard people saying, "I'm not going to buy this book, it's just going to encourage cutting." The truth is, if you read it, it deglamorizes and debunks a lot of myths there are about cutting.

DH: Is there a process when you write your books or is it just whatever comes to mind?

PM: I don't outline the books. In that way it makes it fresh for me, too. When I sit down there's a sense of discovery that I have every day, in the same way that the reader has a sense of discovery every time he turns the page. But then I get to the point where I do have to fill in the blanks and make sure that the plot is working.

DH: How would a novice writer go about getting their work published?

PM: A couple of things that I would suggest would be going through various contest that a lot of publishers are running. They're looking for books by young adults that are for young adults. People who are actually living it and can describe it to their peers. I would also suggest the internet. You can write, put it up, and immediately get feedback. It's not like the old days when you had to wait for the school literary journal to come out or take your chances at getting into a magazine. I think those are some really good possibilities that are out there.

DH: What kind of childhood up-bringing did you have and what effect did it have on your writing?

PM: It was a very mixed experience. We lived in a very nice suburban development. There were never financial problems, but there was a lot of anger and tension inside the house. There were fun times, too. It wasn't all one thing. But the part of it that was angry and confusing and abusive sort of dominates my thinking. Why would I think back on that period? Because of the confusion I experienced, looking at the family from the outside and how everything looked pretty great from the inside, but something, and some important things, were not so great. But I think that it really effected my writing, in that it's easy for me to get into the shoes of someone who is in trouble or who is in over their head. I hope that I bring that to my writing.

DH: What was your foundation for your short story "Orange Alert" in Up All Night?

PM: The assignment was to write about something that happens in the middle of the night and as a kid I used to sneak out and go to Dunkin' Doughnuts in the middle of the night, which was almost a mile walk from my house. The idea from the story started out with the idea of a girl sneaking out to go driving at night, somebody who is 15 years old and who doesn't have her license. And the power and the the mystery of doing something like that in the middle of the night really appealed to me.

DH: How can your books be used inside the classroom? (PAY ATTENTION TEACHERS!)

PM: The way to make use of books like mine and a lot of modern novels is to pair them with with the classics. So, if you have to read All Quiet on the Western Front, a book that feels very distant a removed; I think it would be smart to put it with Purple Heart or Sunrise Over Fallujah to show the way in which war has changed and in which the feeling of being a soldier is universal. If you're reading The Scarlet Letter, it would also be really great to read a book, a contemporary book, about an unwed mother. I think that otherwise those older stories can seem kind of ancient and there isn't a connection that students can easily make, but by pulling another similar story it helps to make that connection.

DH: If there was a message that you would want to get out to teachers or librarians, what would that be?

PM: A message that a lot of them are already on to and that is to encourage kids to read for pleasure. That what has happened with so much reading, is that it has become compulsory and having to read ten pages a night and every one is marching along at the same pace, with the same book. It starts to feel drudgery. And I know that teachers have to teach the same books to everybody and to follow a curriculum. But to restore some of that joy back into reading would allow people to also read the books that they create. And bring in new forms. Bring in graphic novels, bring in manga, that kind of thing.

DH: When do you find yourself most inspired? What triggers your imagination?

PM: I think it's mostly news stories, things that happen in real life. I'll see a photograph in the paper or hear about a contemporary issue. That's what really inspires me, picking something bigger, or a big social issue, and looking at it from lens of a character, or a group of characters.