Getting the Words Out Quickly: 3 Qs for YA writer Hannah Moskowitz

As I mentioned yesterday, Young Adult author Hannah Moskowitz was gracious enough to take time out to visit with BtO and answer our famous 3 questions. She also dishes at the end about her process finding an agent, and her amazing one-night revision (kids, don't try this at home). A warm, smart young woman, Hannah's off to a great start, both as a human being and as a writer, and the fact that she calls her Twitter followers "magic gay fish" makes me almost want to sign up for Twitter. Get to know Hannah, and get to know her novel Break. If you like edgy YA in the style of Laurie Halse Anderson, I can almost guarantee you'll fall in love.


I came across you because of your fabulous blog post about male characters and YA. Can you elaborate on that a bit here? How has it been writing from a male point of view, and why do you think you've chosen it? Or did it choose you? Did you just start hearing the voice?

Writing from a female point of view honestly never occurred to me. My favorite books have always been from male points of view. I actually just recently started reading a lot of female POV (and I've loved it!) and I'm planning my first female POV manuscript for this fall.

Writing boys always made for sense to me, and I've noticed the only people who are surprised by it are people who don't know me; I don't think my friends would have expected anything else!

I think there need to be more books from male POVs, because they've become somewhat scarce lately. But what I really think we need are more books with three-dimensional male characters, regardless of the POV character.

BREAK reminds me a little of SPEAK, WINTERGIRLS, and other work by Laurie Halse Anderson. Is she an influence of yours? What are your other influences?

I love you entirely for saying that. I am a huge, huge Laurie Halse Anderson fan--until recently, she was one of the few female-centric writers I read--and I think she's definitely a big influence for me. I would love to have a career like hers, and whenever I feel a little lost, I'll admit to doing a little bit of "What would LHA do?"

Some of my other big influences are Garret Freymann-Weyr, Chuck Palahniuk, Chris Lynch, John Green, Ned Vizzini, Adam Rapp, and John Irving.

What's your process like as a writer, and how has it been affected by your recent enrollment at Brown?

I write first drafts very very quickly--usually in under a week--and then spend a few weeks revising after that. So my general process is just to get the words out as quickly as possible, before I start second-guessing myself.

I'm not at Brown anymore--I transferred to University of Maryland--but being in college hasn't affected my writing too strongly. I have more free time than I did in high school, after all.

Okay, extra dish question: Is it true that you revised BREAK in a night after receiving a request from an agent for a full manuscript? What's the scoop on how you got an agent?

Heehee, yes. It's not as bad at it sounds; I had two drafts of the book finished but was halfway through draft 3 when I started querying. I knew I could finish in a few hours if I got a full request, and I did.

The short answer for how I got an agent is that I went through it the traditional way. I queried for a year and FINALLY got an offer. The long answer is I'm on my third agent now, and I'm doing a series of posts on my blog about it if you want the full story!

Buy This Book: Break, by Hannah Moskowitz

I came across Hannah Moskowitz's writing quite by accident, when looking up blogs about YA male characters. Tune in tomorrow, when I'll dish with Hannah about this and other subjects, but first I want to introduce you to her and her novel Break, which debuted last year.

Break is in the tradition of Laurie Halse Anderson--edgy but lyrical, intense but nuanced, fast-paced but psychologically ripe. In chapter one, we're introduced to protagonist Jonah, who breaks his wrist in the second sentence. Intentionally. Yes, that's right, Jonah's goal is to break as many bones as he can, and he has his friend Naomi to document it. As usual with a premise like this, the track of the novel is as much about the psychological interworkings and pathology of the central character as it is about the arc of the story, and Moskowitz handles this balance beautifully.

She takes what could have been a melodramatic or emotionally difficult story and carries us through the trauma with biting dark comedy. From Naomi, who would "probably shake hands on her deathbed," to Jonah's brother Jesse, who is allergic to everything, the characters come alive through Jonah's sarcastic and intelligent voice. Moskowitz is a careful observer of human nature, and gets so many things excruciatingly right. Jonah describes his parents as having "home-from-the-ER faces," even though his mother "stayed home and bounced the baby." The dialogue leaps off the page, and the parents, although a little thinner and less consistently drawn, have the ring of truth. The whole novel has that ring, and if you're not impressed enough already, just wait until Tuesday when you'll get to hear from Hannah, who, by the way, got the contract for Break when she was just sixteen.

What an amazing gift this young woman has. Get acquainted with her now, and watch her develop. I'm beginning to sense a superstar.