Alex Flinn: Playing Hooky (or, Write What You Have To)

I have a lot of trouble staying on task. That's how I became a writer. When I was a lawyer, my mind would wander. I'd make up stories and write them down during my lunch hour. It was fun, writing when I was supposed to be doing something else, like playing hooky.

I still play hooky. Sometimes, I'm writing what I'm supposed to write, and I'll have an idea that takes over my mind and won't take no for an answer. When this happens, I've learned that I have to follow that instinct.

This happened with my very first book. I was writing a story about a girl whose boyfriend hits her, and right in the middle, I started thinking about the boy. A lot. In fact, I had to sit down and write a bunch of pages about the boy.

Eventually, I ended up chucking the book about the girl and writing about the boy, and that's the book that got published.

That's not the only example. Once, I was most of the way through a book I had a contract for when I started thinking about another book. I stopped what I was doing and wrote it (but I wrote the other book, too, after I finished).

And just recently, when I was writing and minding my own business, I started obsessing over Beauty and the Beast. I have kids, so we read the story a lot, and things started bothering me about it. Like why would Beauty’s father let her go live with the Beast? And where was the Beast’s family? I found that I had to write a book about the Beast, so I did, a modern Beast, set in New York City, and that book is being published this fall, Beastly.

Sometimes, you just have to play hooky.

Have you ever felt like you had to write a certain story? Did you?

Alex Flinn
Author of Diva