Andrea Seigel: Allowing alternative narrative modes in popular enterta...

One of the many advantages of being a loner is that often there's time to think, ponder, brood, meditate deeply, and figure things out to one's satisfaction.

Andrea Seigel

solitude wisdom thinking

There's nothing essentially romantic about things like roses or jewelry. Romance starts as some blank concept, and then you just fill it in with objects so you have something to point to when you want to make it real.

Andrea Seigel

romance real rose

I've always believed that if you're truly in love with someone, you shouldn't be able to answer the question 'What do you love about him?' with any kind of real satisfaction.

Andrea Seigel

able real answers

I can be like that: forgetting how hard it was to do something after I'm past it.

Andrea Seigel

something hard i-can past

I'm definitely very interested in doing female narrators that aren't typically feminine or emotional or soft - especially teenage girls - because I have such a hard time relating to so many of them that I read. They feel psychologically cuter to me than I ever was.

Andrea Seigel

doing feel me time

I think a conceptual idea comes to me first - something I've been mulling over a lot right before I feel like writing a book - and then the characters start to develop around it.

Andrea Seigel

feel think me book

The second book was probably the result of the relationship I was in at the time. We were only going to be compatible for a minute, and I think we both knew it. It's like how you can be a different person on vacation, but you know all along you're just visiting that mindset.

Andrea Seigel

you time relationship book

I lean toward anything with a dark sense of humor. And since I've been out of school, the majority of my books have been contemporary; basically, I like my characters to have electricity - even better, a TV.

Andrea Seigel

better humor dark school

I've dreamed of having my French bulldog become a bestselling children's heroine.

Andrea Seigel

heroine having become children

I do not believe that I will ever write an adult novel from an animal's point of view unless someday it becomes suddenly appealing to me to make a narrator a mentally ill pet. Never say never.

Andrea Seigel

me pet animal believe

Try to remember that decisions are made by individual, fallible personalities, not gods. It's hard. I know.

Andrea Seigel

try know hard remember

Irvine is such a safe, stable, planned community, and I'm a person who has a lot of inner longing for drama and romance. So I think in some way the structure of Irvine made me more creative because I had these boundaries, and I thought outside them.

Andrea Seigel

think me community way

Because teenagers don't have adult responsibilities yet, you can create your own drama, and it's a universe of your own emotions.

Andrea Seigel

emotions own you universe

The first time I ever heard professional actors delivering lines that I wrote was completely surreal and was just a gigantic moment in my life. It was just a little bit mind-blowing and completely strange to have something that had been on my computer being said out loud.

Andrea Seigel

my-life moment time life

Irvine, being a planned community, is really good shorthand, especially in a movie or book, for understanding suburban pressures.

Andrea Seigel

good community understanding book

I'd go to the library so I could sit in a big, quiet room and listen to pages being turned. There was a boring librarian who everyone in fifth grade hated. But I loved her because when she would read us stories in her soft voice, she'd turn my head into a snow globe.

Andrea Seigel

loved library voice snow

I was an anxious kid. I worried about getting homework finished, even back when homework didn't count for anything.

Andrea Seigel

anything back kid homework

As a kid, I was only allowed to watch a certain amount of television. But once I was old enough to own my own TV, I would stay up until 4:00 A.M. watching Home Shopping Network night after night. Soft-spoken women talked about the jewelry in very detailed, intricate, precious ways, and I loved it.

Andrea Seigel

shopping women home night

Viewers make online requests to their favorite video-making whisperers to do the things that trigger their head tingles. Everyone's needs are different. It's like an interactive choose-your-own-adventure.

Andrea Seigel

everyone things like different

I've never read any of the '50 Shades of Grey' books because the Internet pre-educated me about the 'my inner goddess is doing the merengue with some salsa moves' material.

Andrea Seigel

doing never me internet

Allowing alternative narrative modes in popular entertainment may seem obvious, yet when you turn a pilot into the people upstairs and the main character isn't after what she wants by the top of page two, you get treated as if you've failed at writing.