YA novelist and Governor General’s Award-winning writer Susin Nielsen shared her journey to authorhood.
It’s an equation: 1/3 talent, 1/3 hard work, and 1/3 luck.
She showed use her first diary, and even read to us some of her early entries: “If I become famous, I may want to keep a diary.”
She aspired to be Harriet the Spy and her first diary lasted for all of 8 days. Susin was in 7th drade.
There were always books in the house. She was an off-beat kid. It was a while before she realized that elaborate imaginary games were not where her classmates were at.
She didn’t have a lot of friends.
Her first book was The Smallest Snippet in Snippeton. She showed it to us 🙂
She submitted poems to Seventeen magazine and received the response: “Nicely written, but much too depressing for us.” Susin read us one of the poems: “Suicide.” It was a little maudlin.
Malcolm Gladwell writes about the 10,000 hour rule. About that time, she was about the 200 hour range.
She went to Ryerson, got a job in food services for Degrassi, wrote a spec script, which eventually became 16 episodes of the long-running Canadian series.
When Word Nerd was published in 2006, her agent was incredibly helpful.
Susin Nielsen in Lorette, Manitoba (Photo credit: Tundra Books)
The bottom line: if you’re a writer, write. Hone your craft.
