Cyber Launch Party Day 7: The Ballad of a Book

It's officially BALLADS OF SUBURBIA release day! Excitement and nervousness are in the air. This book really is my heart and soul and I have such high hopes for it. But we'll get to that in a minute.

I meant to post this blog much earlier, but I've been out enjoying my day with a mani/pedi... though I already fucked up one toe because I stumbled. *sigh* such a klutz.

I also went to spot Ballads in the wild, but sadly my local Borders only had 2 copies (compared to last years 20 of IWBYJR) and another local bookstore had none. :( Hopefully it's showing up in other people's towns though and I'd love to see pics so I will add that to today's contest. Also, if you want a *signed* copy of Ballads, you should order it from Women & Children First ASAP as I will be in there signing on Friday and they will ship the book out to wherever you are located. All the details on that are here. And remember, wherever you buy Ballads from before July 31 you can enter to win Write For A Reader's Ballads Blitz Contest!

Speaking of Contests....

Today's Winner:

Each day I am announcing the winner of the contest that was posted one week earlier. Today's winner gets Beige from Cecil Castellucci! And that winner is... The Sword and the Faith from MySpace! I will email you for your address shortly! Remember to enter last week's contests! Each contests lasts one week!

Today, I'm going to blog about the story behind Ballads of Suburbia, the how's and why's that went into my writing it.

I also did a guest blog for Reading Keeps You Sane's On the Outside feature that I think really compliments the blog I'm writing today because it tells the story of the title and the cover. So check it out! Also if you want to know which songs inspired me most while writing the book, go here to West of Mars.

The Ballad of a Book: Stephanie Kuehnert

"If you made a book of what really happened, it would be a really upsetting book."- Angela Chase, My So-Called Life

I keep telling people that this is the book I became a writer to write. The emotions, the general themes of the book have been present in my work since I started writing seriously. There were traces of Ballads of Suburbia in the Sylvia Plath rip-off poetry I wrote about sharp objects in eighth grade-- the poetry that got me sent to the guidance counselor. (Where I didn't get any useful guidance.)

And I poured the feelings I would later channel to write Ballads into my zines as a teenager. Some parts blood, bile, and anger, but mostly a fight for survival, my words my only weapon.

I first started trying to tell this story in my late teens/early twenties when I wrote short stories about jaded kids hanging out in diners or clubs. Those stories were vague, heavy on the symbolism and description, light on the lot. The emotional sense they evoked was novacaine numbness where you know something terrible is going on, but you can't feel it. That's how I lived back then.

Ages 14 through 21, I spent numbing myself in one way or another: cutting, alcohol, drugs. The only healthy outlet, the only real tool I had to work my way through the pain was writing. With words I didn't wake up bleeding or scarred or with a pounding headache and aching limbs. With words I forced myself to remember and figure things out instead of trying unsuccessfully to forget.

Words were my lifeline and eventually I followed them out of the darkness. I went back to school to get my bachelors (and later my masters) in fiction writing at Columbia College Chicago. I came back home to Oak Park, the town I'd fled at seventeen like I was on fire. The town of bad memories. Younger years of loneliness and being bullied and every good friend I had moving away. The older years of damaged boys who damaged me and of drugs and self-destruction. I didn't know how I felt about Oak Park upon my return (I still don't know how I feel about it), but I loved Chicago. I loved my classes. I loved spending time between them in Grant Park or by the lake. Writing, writing, writing.

I wrote a whole novel in six months. It was called The Morning After. Like Ballads of Suburbia it was the stor of a girl trying to survive her teenage years in the suburbs. But when I finished, I put it in a drawer and swore it would never see the light of day. Because that version of Kara was thinly veiled teenage me. It was what I needed to purge, the leftover teen angst and ugly memories. Then I was ready to write for real.

I knew that I wanted to write a story about suburbia, but since I didn't want it to be about my life at all, I decided to distance myself by writing something completely different. So I wrote I Wanna Be Your Joey Ramone. I focused on the landscape of my adopted hom in Wisconsin and wrote a story driven by my love of punk rock. There was a bit more purging in there. Louisa, your dark side, I know it all too well.

While I was writing that book, my suburbia story stewed. One day I was watching My So-Called Life and I found myself scrawling down something the character Angela Chase said: "If you made a book of what really happened, it would be a really upsetting book."

I knew that when I wrote about the suburbs that was the kind of book I'd have to write. It would have to be honest and raw. It would have to shatter the myth of kinder, safer suburbia because I knew that was a lie. It would have to drag out all of the darkness people keep locked up and shine an unflinching spotlight on it. Loneliness, bullying, parental abandonment, the freedom that led to disaster, the drugs, the cutting, the damaged love, the depression. I'd have to put it all on display. And though I'd experienced many of those things, I didn't want to write about my actual experiences. So I needed a framework.

Enter Joe Meno, who is not only an amazing author, but one of the best teachers in the world. Strangely enough in the class of his that I took to figure out the structure of IWBYJR, I figured out the structure of Ballads instead. As I mention in the On the Outside blog, Joe brought a boombox and some Johnny Cash cds one day and got us thinking about ballads as a form of storytelling. I thought about Johnny's songs and various punk songs and how brutally honest the singers were about life. My characters would need to be that honest. The would need a place to be that honest. A notebook, I scrawled down. They will tell their stories in a notebook. I also noted, "Think of each chapter, each scene as a song, a ballad, an ode to being a teenager in suburbia."

So I had the structure and I had the title, but I didn't start the actual writing until over a year later when I'd finished IWBYJR. The story simmered and I pondered. I wondered if I would dare to set it in the real Oak Park. My thinly veiled autobiography was in a fake Oak Park that I called Lincoln Prairie. I wanted to avoid the "what is real" questions. But now that I knew it would be entirely fiction, I was comfortable with writing about the real place. Beside I love Chicago books and I know my corner of Chicago so well, I just wanted to capture it. When the first chapter of Ballads, the epilogue, spilled out, it was filled with references to landmarks and streets I knew so well. I had to keep it. It was authentic and that was what I needed this book to be.

I have to say the authenticity of it caused more than one nervous breakdown. Once I realized what this book would be about, especially the struggle that Kara has with self-injury-- which was something I struggled with as a teen and I'd searched for answers in books and never found them--I started holding it to this incredibly high level of perfection. I wanted it to be real. I wanted it to be right. No plot holes. I wanted to capture the reader and not let go until it was over and leave them thinking for days.

I remember the end of December 2007, I'd been sick for all of Christmas break and was struggling to get the book just write for my agent to submit it. I laid in bed and cried over it for an entire day, convinced that I couldn't do the story or the characters justice. My fiance, Scott, sat patiently beside me and asked, "Where do you think the flaws are? Talk them through." And I did and the book was submitted in February and under contract shortly thereafter.

Then came revisions. My editor is amazing and she pushes hard, hard, hard. So do my critique partners. They all wanted me to go even deeper into Kara's head. The cutting. They especially wanted to understand the cutting. This meant going into a very black place in my past. Remembering what I did, how it felt, why I did it. I pushed so hard sometimes it made me want to cut again even though I hadn't in 7 years. Revisions happened over the holidays and it was brutal. I had to get an extension, only a day or two, but I felt terrible about it. Still I pushed and I pushed. Scott talked me off ledges. My best friend came over and bummed me a cigarette or two. That was my only vice. And I made it through.

There were times when I hated this book. I never thought I would be as happy with it as I was with IWBYJR. But now I'm happier. Now I hope it will reach a lot of people and really help them. I hope. I hope.

It was a story that had to be told and now it is here. I hope you enjoy it.

Today's Contest:
Up for grabs today is a signed copy of Ballads, as well as a signed cover flat, a copy of the soundtrack and some other goodies I will throw together in celebration of the release day.

To enter just leave a comment. You'll earn additional entries by blogging/tweeting/etc about this blog or the cyber launch party. And you'll earn even more entries by taking pictures of Ballads in the wild or of you with your new copy of it! Just note your additional entries in your comment.

Winner will be chosen at random on Tuesday July 28!

Tomorrow's Guest:

Tomorrow, Kelly Parra, author of Invisible Touch and Graffiti Girl will be guest-blogging. So please come back to see what she has to say!