Drums, Girls, and Dangerous Pie

by Jordan Sonnenblick

  A: I knew in advance that the book had to be funny, partly because my student was always giggling even in the midst of her real-life situation, and partly because I laughed my way through middle school. Truthfully, if you asked my current students, they’d tell you I am still laughing my way through middle school.

  Anyway, a lot of people thought I was nuts to write a funny cancer novel—but I had to. I think one of the best and noblest things about being a human being is that we can find laughter anywhere. We just sometimes forget to look.

  Q: What is your writing routine like? Do you write every day? Do you write in a special place?

  A: I am not a routine-oriented kind of guy. Mostly, I just write late at night, until I can’t keep my head up off the keyboard. Except for the last twenty pages or so of each book, which get written in a mad weekend-long spurt of insanity. Writing, for me, is like that joke: A man is walking down the street, whacking himself on the forehead with a ball-peen hammer. A woman walks up to him and says, “Doesn’t that hurt?” He says, “Absolutely.” The woman says, “Then why are you doing it?” The guy says, “Because it feels so good when I stop!”

  So that’s why my so-called “routine” for each novel is really more of a crazed dash to the finish line.

  Q: What advice would you give to aspiring writers?

  A: Sleep a lot now, while you can! No, seriously, read a ton. And don’t just read one genre or format; read everything. The only way to figure out how to use the nuts and bolts of this thing called storytelling is to examine a lot of these complicated machines called books.

  Q: In addition to being a writer, you are also a seriously talented musician. Are the creation processes similar for you?

  A: I see all forms of art as being closely related. However, drumming feels great—physically great—while you’re doing it, while writing only feels great afterward. The best thing about drumming is that when you’re playing really, really well, you will get into a sort of trance in which you forget about everything but the beat. The best part of writing is that you get to paint pictures in other people’s heads!

  Q: Do you yourself own a pair of “special sticks”?

  A: No. Probably the only object I own that I care about to that extent is a wooden anchor my father carved as a room decoration for me when I was a baby. Since my father’s death in 2005, I sometimes just sit and run my fingers over the wood of the anchor and feel like I am, in some sense, spending time with my dad.

  The idea for the special sticks in the novel came from my middle-school band teacher, who used to engrave each drummer’s name on his or her sticks, so that we wouldn’t constantly be fighting over which sticks were whose. I loved my engraved sticks, because when I was bored I could run my fingertips over the engraving and “read” my name.

  I have no idea what’s up with my fascination for the texture of wooden objects. So please don’t ask.

  Bonus Material

  Now That’s a Sandwich!: How to Make Your Characters into Characters

  by Jordan Sonnenblick

  My grandfather was my idol when I was a kid. He was a teacher and published author, which goes a long way toward explaining why I grew up to become a teacher and author. But he had-some, um, weird habits. For example, he loved going to Burger King and putting about twenty French fries on his burger. He would lay them out carefully, so they were all parallel to each other. Then he would take a huge bite of the burger and say, “Now that’s a sandwich!”

  OK, so my Grampa had nutritional issues. What does that have to do with writing? Well, here’s the deal: There are only three places a writer can find things to write about. The first is his or her own life. The second is stories told by others. The last is total imagination. This habit of my grandfather’s is an example of applying the first kind of material to the craft of characterization. Because it is so vivid in my own memory, I know I could make it really come to life as an odd thing a character does in a book. I could use this strange French fry thing to make a character real. Another example of the real-life detail as a source for characterization is the “dangerous pie” episode. Because my son really made dangerous pie, I knew that the incident would resonate on the page.

  Now if you’re a creative-writing type, stop reading for a minute and grab a pencil and paper or a computer (or, if you’re reading this in some far-flung, hi-tech future, an atomic brain pen). Try to brainstorm a list of people you know and their really odd habits and characteristics. Like so:

  Uncle Bobby: Enjoys catching insects with a pair of chopsticks—why?

  That kid Joey in health class: Wears socks as mittens.

  Athlete’s hand?

  Mom: Constantly braids and unbraids hair. It looks weird.

  IMPORTANT SAFETY NOTE: KEEP THE LIST SECRET FROM EVERYONE. TRUST ME ON THIS!

  That second source, stories told by others, is a biggie for me, too. In Drums, you know that chapter where Steven is banished to his grandparents’ house? Well, one day I was standing around with my friend Marlene at lunch duty—which can be an incredibly boring chore or a great time, depending on which other teachers have lunch duty with you. With Marlene, lunch duty is always the great-time kind, and this day was no exception. She started telling me this hilarious story about her weekend. She and her husband had gone away for a romantic weekend together, leaving their fourteen-year-old daughter at Marlene’s mother’s house. As Marlene started reciting her daughter’s long list of “The Horrors of Grandma’s House,” I started writing the banishment chapter of Drums in my head. If you think about it, that chapter was pretty important for fleshing out Steven’s personality: It shows you how much he feels sorry for himself.

  So a good writer has to be a great listener: You never know when your friend is going to give you the gift of a whole prewritten book chapter.

  The last source, total imagination, is the hardest to teach. In fact, I sometimes discover little things my characters do that bring them to life while I’m writing their scenes. I can’t explain it, because I can’t make it happen. You just have to be ready to flow with it when it does. Example: In an upcoming book of mine, the main character says “Yikes” all the time, and the girl he loves has a habit of blowing her bangs up out of her eyes. I didn’t come up with either of those things while I was outlining the novel; they just “happened” as I was picturing these people in my head. And that’s a good sign, because it tells the writer that the characters are starting to breathe.

  A weird thing about the total imagination part is that I generally get all of my best out-of-the-blue ideas while I’m taking a walk. I know a lot of other authors who find this, too; the British poet William Wordsworth used to march around the countryside, shouting his lines as he composed them. I’m not that strange, though. I walk quietly, and then write like a madman as soon as I get home. You might want to try this technique if you’re ever stuck for inspiration. At best, you’ll come up with your Drums, Girls & Dangerous Pie. At worst, you’ll get some fresh air and build up your leg muscles.

  All right, that’s the end of today’s lesson. I just have one final bit of advice: The next time you’re at Burger King, try my Grampa’s French fry thing. But whatever you do, don’t put any onion rings on there. That would just be gross.

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  A Sneak Peek at Notes from the Midnight Driver

  MAY

  Boop. Boop. Boop.

  I’m sitting next to the old man’s bed, watching the bright green line spike and jiggle across the screen of his heart monitor. Just a couple of days ago, those little mountains on the monitor were floating from left to right in perfect order, but now they’re jangling and jerking like maddened hand puppets.

  I know that, sometime soon, the boops will become one long beep, the mountains will crumble into a flat line, and I will be finished with my work here.

  I will be free.

  LAST SEPTEMBER

  Gnome Run

  It seemed like a good idea at the time. Yes, I know everybody says
that—but I’m serious. As insane as it looks in retrospect, I was fully convinced on that particular Friday evening last September that stealing my mom’s car and storming my dad’s house was a brilliant plan. And not brilliant, as in, “That was a brilliant answer you gave in Spanish today.” I mean brilliant, as in, “Wow, Einstein, when you came up with that relativity thing, and it revolutionized our entire conception of space and time while also leading all of humankind into the nuclear age, that was brilliant!”

  The plan had a certain elegant simplicity, too. I would just drink one more pint of Dad’s old vodka, grab Mom’s spare car keys, jump into the Dodge, and fire that sucker up. Then I would speed through the deserted, moonlit streets, straight and true as a homing missile, or at least straight and true as a sober person who actually knew how to drive. When I skidded triumphantly into Dad’s driveway, I would leap nimbly from the car, race to the front door, ring the bell with a fury rarely encountered by any bell, anywhere—and catch my father and the no-good home-wrecking wench who was once, in a forgotten life we used to have, my third-grade teacher.

  Okay, perhaps these plans would theoretically work better if the planner were not already completely intoxicated. But I’d never gotten drunk before-—-so how was I supposed to know I’d get smashed so quickly? And hey, if my mom had really wanted to keep me from driving drunk without a license at age sixteen, would she have gone out on a date and left me home with a car, a liquor cabinet, and some keys?

  I rest my case.

  So I downed some more booze straight from the bottle and lunged for the key ring, grabbing it by the wooden number 1 I had made for my “Number One Mom” in Cub Scouts. I threw on my Yankees jacket, slammed my way out of the house, got into the car and started it. Then I believe there was some drama with the gear stick and the parking brake, and probably a bit of fun with the gas pedal.

  The next thing I knew, I was hanging out the passenger door, puking up vodka and Ring Dings. When I got my eyes sort of focused, I could see that the car was up on a lawn. When I got them even more focused, I could see that my last salvo of vomit had completely splattered two shiny black objects—the well-polished shoes of one angry police officer. He yanked me out of the car, largely by the hair, and stood me up. I remember him saying, “Look at that! Look what you did.” I also remember trying to follow his pointing finger. And when I finally zoomed in on what was lying in front of the car, I couldn’t believe it. There was a detached head about ten feet in front of the bumper!

  The cop sort of puppet-marched me up to the horrific scene and forced my head down close to the carnage. This head was seriously injured, to be sure. It was upside down, smushed up against a tree stump, and there was no body in sight. I whirled around so fast that the cop almost lost hold of me, and crouched to look under Mom’s car. Sure enough, an arm and a leg were sticking out from underneath the left front wheel.

  “Officer, sir, did I—is he—is—ummm…”

  I could feel the tears welling up. My eyes burned, and the next wave of acid was coming up my throat in a hurry.

  “Yes, Son. You ruined my brand new shoes, smashed up your car, and decapitated Mrs. Wilson’s French lawn gnome. You’re in some serious…”

  “Lawn gnome? LAWN GNOME?”

  Now that I looked a bit more closely, I noticed that the head wasn’t bleeding, and that the ear had cracked off with inhuman neatness. I began to laugh like an idiot, but my relief came too late to halt my barf, which came out mostly through my nose—and landed on the officer’s left side, all over his walkie-talkie.

  Excerpt text copyright © 2006 by Jordan Sonnenblick

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  E-ISBN: 978-0-545-23116-9

  Copyright © 2004 by Jordan Sonnenblick. All rights reserved. SCHOLASTIC, SCHOLASTIC PRESS, and associated logos are trademarks and/or registered trademarks of Scholastic Inc.

  Cover photo copyright © Marc Tauss. Cover design by Marijka Kostiw.