Author Insight: Allison Winn Scotch

Tell our readers about your background. Where are you from, and how did you start writing for a living?

I was born in Virginia but moved to Seattle when I was ten, so generally think of having grown-up there. I left for college back east at 18 and have lived on the east coast (with a quick stint for a year in Dallas and Los Angeles) ever since. I’ve always been a writer, but to be honest, never thought that it was a viable career. In college, I had a pretty sought-after op-ed in the paper, and everyone used to tell me that I should pursue it upon graduation but I just thought, “That’s ridiculous! How does anyone ever get PAID to write?” Truly. It seemed outlandish. I got a “real” job working in PR but quickly abandoned it in hopes of pursuing my dream of becoming a professional actress. That was going fairly well – I’d gotten my SAG card, shot some commercials, done three or four NYC stage productions – when a friend from college called me to glean some marketing and PR ideas about an internet company she was starting. I was in LA at the time, and thought the idea was so intriguing that I offered to move back and help her launch it.

Anyway, not to drag this story out for too long (!!), eventually, the company was sold, and a lot of our clients asked me to work for them on freelance basis, doing their web copy and PR, which I’d done for the internet site. From there, I was hired by a prestigious NYC PR company to ghostwrite for their celebrity clients, and with that under my belt, I landed – to my complete shock – a gig ghostwriting a book for The Knot. Once I had that book experience under my belt, I broke into magazines fairly easily – my first assignment was for Bride’s – though I don’t mean to give the impression that this was an easy road. Though I got that initial assignment off the bat, it took me a few years to really get a foothold in the industry. Eventually, I did – with A LOT of hard work and hustling – and worked as a freelance magazine scribe for about five years before I got the itch to try something new. I wrote a novel (which never sold), while still freelancing, and eventually, several years after that, I did end up selling a different manuscript that became my debut novel.

Give us a quick rundown of the books you’ve written, starting with your most recent book.

The most recent book is called The One That I Want, and it’s about a woman who thinks she has a perfect life, only to be given the ability to see into the future, when she sees that nothing is perfect about her life at all. My last book, Time of My Life, is sort of the inverse of this idea: it follows a discontented stay-at-home mom who had regrets about her decisions and who, thus, wakes up one day seven years in the past and has the opportunity to relive her life. And my debut, The Department of Lost and Found, is about a 30-year old woman who thinks she’s striving toward one thing only to be diagnosed with cancer, and has to re-evaluate everything that she once deemed important. (That sounds kind of cheesy, but I promise that it’s not!)

Where did you get the idea for your current novel and how did you come up with the title?

Well, to be honest, it came from a few places. One, I really love this idea of asking those big “what if” questions. I think it gives books and your characters a lot of momentum, and they’re fun to write about AND to read about. So I took the concept of Time of My Life and flipped it on its head: I sort of made everything the opposite. So that was the start. I also think, in this day and age, where things can fall apart pretty easily – marriages, finances, security – it was a relevant question to pose: what if your life is totally uprooted from you one day? What then? How do you steer yourself back toward happiness? As far as the title, there’s a high school musical subplot that involves Grease. :) But even more to that, the question is posed – is this the life you want? And if not, how do you go about getting the one that you want? I loved that.

Tell us a little about the heroine of your book.

Tilly is a guidance counselor at her old high school in her small town of Westlake, Washington, and married to her high school sweetheart. She’s pretty easily satisfied with her life, and as a consequence of some things that she’s had to live through, doesn’t ask too many questions of herself or her circumstances. It’s sort of her defense mechanism: to see everything through rose colored glasses. But underneath the surface, there are a lot of problems – a father struggling to stay sober, a sister who is ragingly angry at the world, a husband who feels like he’s outgrown their lives.

What is your favorite scene in your current book?

I have a few – several of them are toward the end of the book, so I won’t spoil those. But I don’t think it gives too much away to say that the scene when they actually do Grease is one of my favorites. It really encapsulates the message of the book, what the characters are working toward, and is, I think, sweet without being saccharine. There’s also a scene early on when Tilly confronts an old childhood friend, Ashley Simmons, at her apartment, and it’s the first time when readers really see her start to become unhinged. I love everything about that scene – who Tilly starts to become and the energy that it infuses into the book.

Are the characters in this book based on people you’ve personally encountered?

No, not at all. This book was actually a struggle for me to write because I felt like this cast of characters – Tilly especially – were so far outside my scope. Which is part of the reason I chose them – my other books were pretty easy and comfortable to write, but I wanted to challenge myself, remove any traces of my real life, and see what I could come up with. It took me a long time to understand Tilly, and I’ll be honest, it was a PROCESS getting there, but in the end, I’m really pleased with the book and who she evolved to be.

Tell us about your writing process: how do you write? How do you approach a book? Where do you do your best writing?

I’m a pantser, which means that I write by the seat of my pants: no outline, no mapping. I literally start with an idea and a few characters, then sit down and write and see where they guide me. That sounds hokey, but it’s true. I always see it as my job to throw obstacles in their path as they go from A to B, but I don’t plan how they’re going to react to said obstacles until they’re in the moment. It’s the only way that I know of to make honest, organic characters. This method actually posed a pretty huge problem for this book, though. Because Tilly has flashforwards, I had to know what was going to happen at the end of the book, and since I don’t write that way, I had no idea! It took many drafts to really pinpoint it and get it right. I write in my home office, it’s really the only place that I write at all. I’m sort of a creature of habit, so I sit down around the same time every day, go through my various rituals – coffee, web surfing, all of that – and then get busy. I like the repetitive nature of doing this, I think it helps me block out the other distractions that could arise if I changed up my routine every day.

Many of our readers are creative types, but struggle with balancing time for creative pursuits with the mundane tasks required to live life. Walk us through a typical day in your life.

Well, I’m really fortunate in that I get to do this full-time, so it’s not like I have to juggle a day job, then come home and pursue my writing passion. I’m also really fortunate in that this career allows me a lot of flexibility. I start my day by making breakfast for my kids, dropping my 5 year old off at school, then head home and try to spend the mornings writing. I usually hang out with my 3 year old when she comes home from her own school for lunch, and then I squeeze in a workout and my errands. If I haven’t hit my daily word count, I get back to fiction in the afternoon, or I often I have celebrity profiles to write or promotional or marketing stuff to attend to. At some point, I walk our dog (he goes out with his friends and a dog walker in the morning!), and then when my kids get home with my babysitter, I shut down for the night, make them dinner, catch up on our days and usually let them watch an episode of Scooby Doo after we’ve read a few books. :) Again, I don’t want anyone to have the impression that I’m juggling in the way that some creative types do. I’m so, so lucky – I have help with my kids so I can focus on this, I have enough hours in the day to properly attend to my manuscript, I’m just blessed. But it took a lot of years and a lot of hard work too, of course.

In what ways did your childhood influence you as a writer? As a person?

My mom ran a Montessori school when I lived in Virginia, and I think her influence as an educator really shaped my love of reading and writing. My brother and I were and are both voracious readers, and my mom really encouraged that. My parents also let me pursue – to a reasonable extent! – my love of acting and music and all things art. I grew up participating in community theater and singing and dancing around the house, and for me, acting is pretty similar to writing: it employs a lot of the same tools. So while I was probably born with this love of artistic pursuits, my parents certainly helped nurture it. They weren’t crazy about the idea of me quitting my PR job to pursue acting, for example, but they understood why I felt compelled to do it, and gave me their blessing.

Most writers are also avid readers. What authors did you read as a child? What authors do you read today? Do you have a favorite book or author?

I grew up reading anything and everything – from Encyclopedia Brown to Judy Blume to Beverly Cleary to Stephen King to the entire Flowers in the Attic anthology! Today, I gravitate toward writers who produce books similar to mine: thought-provoking but not too heavy, fun but still serious, commercial but not flighty. Writers like Jonathan Tropper, Elin Hilderbrand, Laura Dave, Nick Hornby, Amanda Eyre Ward. There are a lot of really wonderful writers out there, so my nightstand is never lacking!

Your book, Time of My Life is being adapted into a film. Tell us a little about the process from the prospective of an author. How much creative control do you have?

The screenplay is nearly complete and the next step, so I’m told, is to attach talent, so it’s pretty exciting! I’ve been fortunate enough to have been kept in the loop from the producers, who have also been kind enough to solicit my opinion on subjects like casting and overall themes and tones of the movie. That said, I’m not the type of writer who feels a ton of ownership over the project, so when you ask about the perspective, I can only offer mine. I suspect that other writers might feel differently, but I truly feel like I wrote the best book I could, and if the movie doesn’t reflect that, it can’t take away from what I put down on the page. Now, is it weird to know that what is in the book might not translate to the big screen, that it might be totally different from my vision? Absolutely. No doubt. But I trusted the producers when I sold this to them, and that’s all you can do. They pay you to relinquish your right to be upset about what they create, so…that’s that. But again, I think they’re doing a wonderful job with it, and I fully expect it to be awesome! I can’t wait to see who ends up playing the parts!

Where can readers go to learn more about you and your latest book?

You can head to my website: www.allisonwinn.com, for more info on my books, and find me on twitter at @aswinn – I love engaging with readers there, as well as on Facebook. Come find me!

Allison Winn Scotch’s latest book, The One That I Want, goes on sale today. Purchase a copy on Amazon or at your local bookstore.