Susan Juby: The Ultimate Do-Over

For me, writing is a form of wish fulfillment. This is strange, because most of my characters aren't successful people. My books are filled with oddballs, misfits, and obsessives of all types. But they all do things I wish I'd done or could do.

My latest book, Another Kind of Cowboy (HarperTeen, Fall 2007), is partly about a young man who devotes himself to his passion for horseback riding. He's naturally gifted and he's also a terrifically hard worker, unlike his best friend, a girl who's only moderately talented but very wealthy.

When I was younger, I rode competitively. I was a decent rider, but I was handicapped by a lackluster work ethic. I believe that the word my coach used to describe me was "lazy." I eventually quit riding to go to college.

As the years passed, I began to regret not taking my riding more seriously. I'd had opportunities to train with well-known riders and hadn’t pursued them, mostly because doing so would have interfered with my social life.

When I became a writer, I realized that my stories gave me the chance to do things differently, at least in my imagination. Writing a book is the ultimate do-over. You get to be and do anything you want. You get to organize the world of your story in such a way that anything is possible.

It’s fantastic! So now instead of lamenting the fact that I wasn’t exactly the queen of follow-through, I can let my characters pursue the passions I didn't. I can investigate what it would be like to be an incredibly hard worker and I can imagine what it would be like to be fabulously wealthy.

The best piece of writing advice I ever got was to make sure you know your characters' deepest desires. I don't always know what those are right away, and I have to find out over the course of the story. But once I have figured out my characters' deepest yearnings. I know I'm going to have a character and a story I'll enjoy writing about.

So what are your deepest desires? Do you see those desires reflected in your characters' lives?

Susan Juby
Author of Alice MacLeod, Realist at Last