Author Vail stops by Park View on her book tour

By Jen Cowart
Posted 3/22/17

By JEN COWART Young adult readers love reading Rachel Vail's books centering on middle school and all that goes with it. Recently, the students at Park View Middle School had the opportunity to hear Vail speak, as she made a stop at PVMS on her book tour

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Author Vail stops by Park View on her book tour

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Young adult readers love reading Rachel Vail's books centering on middle school and all that goes with it.

Recently, the students at Park View Middle School had the opportunity to hear Vail speak, as she made a stop at PVMS on her book tour for her newest book, "Well That Was Awkward." The visit was a collaboration between Barrington Books Retold in Garden City and Stephanie Mills, the school librarian at Park View.

Vail spoke to two groups of students who filled the school auditorium, each session lasting for an hour. She spoke to them about a wide variety of topics, including the difficulties she had in figuring out what it was she wanted to be when she grew up, to her total immersion philosophy on writing and character development, to her children and her tortoise, Lightning. Following the sessions, Vail answered questions, signed books for students and was invited for light refreshments in the school library, where a cake featuring one of her book titles was on display.

"When I was in kindergarten, I wanted to go to first grade and I wanted to fly," said Vail. "When I was in first grade, I wanted to be a teenager. Sometimes I said I wanted to be a teacher, and teachers liked that. I said I wanted to be an actor, a star, and I was good in a school play, but not great. I couldn't figure out what I was good at. I wanted to be talented. When I asked my mother what I was good at, she said, 'Rachel, you are a really nice person,' so obviously I was good at nothing. My own mother was admitting to me, 'Sorry dear, no talent for you.'"

Vail's teachers along the way told her that it wasn't just what she was good at that would determine her future path in life but also what it was that interested her that would guide her.

"I thought about it, and I realized that I was good at hearing, I was good at eavesdropping and I liked reading," she said. "I decided I'd be a spy. I'd be like James Bond. At 17 I applied to colleges and I applied to the Georgetown School of Foreign Service, with no fallback plan, no Plan B. My advice to you is this: have a Plan B, C, Q and Z. Luckily, I got in and I went to college to be a spy, but it was not a good time for me. I told everybody what I was doing and, in hindsight, if you're going to be a spy, you don't want to actually tell anyone."

Vail's initial idea of what writers were like included being old, if not dead, and being someone who would smoke a lot of cigarettes and drink a lot of alcohol, traits that she never seemed to fit.

"I'm terrible at spelling, and I'm not great at handwriting," she said. "Writers are also moody and deep, and I'm not like that. But being a spy was over my head and boring, so I took a playwriting class and I loved getting into my imagination. I've always been greedy, wanting more out of life, wanting to have different talents, to experience a different gender, race, religion so I can live through it all. I can do that with my imagination. Because I am a writer, I can do that and they pay me to do that."

Much of Vail's work revolves around relationships and the emotions that go with them.

"I am very interested in who and what we love and why," she said. "Who are you close with and who matters to you? Who do you trust, who can't you trust, how do you feel? What are your emotions. I love writing about middle school because in middle school you are young and you're growing and changing so fast. Your bones can ache, your soul can ache and your feelings are constantly shifting and changing. You cycle through emotions so fast, and it's just a really rocky road growing up. As a writer, I made a promise to myself that I was going to tell the truth about how it feels to grow up."

Vail told the students that much of her writing time is not at the computer but rather in character development: her walking around in someone else's shoes, living in the mind of another and noticing someone else's way of thinking. She also told the audience that oftentimes things don't go well, with lots of revising before getting things just right.

"I have some good days where things are starting to flow, where I feel like I can hear the character's voice and hours have passed, I didn't notice the ticking of time. Sometimes I look up and it's night," she said. "I'm in the moment, and that feels so good."

During the question and answer portion of the assemblies, students asked Vail how many details from her life are added into her stories.

"A lot of places in the books are near where I live, and some of the events, but definitely all of the feelings," she said. "My character Riley in 'Well That Was Awkward' is compiled from a bunch of different people who could make me and others feel 'this big' and terrible."

Vail said she often tries to dress like her characters, such as a ballerina for example, with her hair in a bun, turning her feet out, learning how to be in that character's body. She told the students that the new shoes she was wearing that very day might appear in her next book because she felt they were something an eighth-grader might wear.

Later, when asked for a message that she would pass along to middle school readers, Vail said, "When we were talking about the empowerment that you get from writing, I want students to remember that you are the artist of yourself, you are the creator in your own life. Middle school kids sometimes feel disempowered to recognize that they are responsible for their lives. You may hear more nos than yeses, but neither are the final verdict. They are just a part of the journey."

For more on Rachel Vail and her books, visit her website, www.rachelvail.com.

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