Lauren DeStefano was born in New Haven, Connecticut, and she received a B.A. in English from Albertus Magnus College. In addition to writing for young adults, DeStefano does web-based school visits and chats with high school teachers in which she talks about the writing process. Wither, the first volume in the Chemical Garden Trilogy, is her first young adult novel. In this first volume, scientists have tampered with the genetic makeup of humans in an attempt to create the perfect species. Their experiment, however, has gone awry—a genetic virus kills young men and women in their prime. In the interview below, DeStefano talks about her writing process and the creation of her first young adult novel.
Cole: I read on your website that you were constantly writing as a child. You wrote on restaurant menus and on notepads your mother carried in her purse. Can you talk about how your interest in writing began at such an early age?
DeStefano: I’m not sure where it really began. I tend to believe I was just born with a tendency to tell stories. When I was very little, I would make up stories in my head to help myself get to sleep at night, and gradually I began daydreaming new characters and new stories just to amuse myself. If I liked a book or a TV show, when it was over I would imagine new little adventures for the characters to have. It was just how my mind worked, and I thought it strange that nobody around me was the same way. When I got older, I started to write them down purely for fun.
Cole: Can you provide some background information regarding how the idea for this book (and this new trilogy) came about?
DeStefano: I was growing frustrated with another writing project I had in the works, and my agent suggested I try writing something new. In my trove of unrealized story ideas, there was a synopsis I’d written years earlier about a virus that kills its victims young and causes society to resort to polygamy. I started playing around with it, thinking it would be a short story or something along those lines, and that’s how Wither happened. There was more to the idea than I’d expected.
Cole: I understand this is your first young adult novel. Can you talk about your process finding a publisher and getting this book published and what you learned about writing from completing this book?
DeStefano: I was fortunate enough that I was already working with my literary agent before I wrote Wither. We were working on an adult story that had been through the ringer a few times. I wrote Wither as more of a fun side project and was pleasantly surprised when it turned out to be the story that sold. You’d have to ask my agent about most of the details of the sale, but I finished writing it at the end of September, my agent had read it and started to go out with it by mid-October, and we accepted an offer from Simon & Schuster before Halloween. I think the main thing I learned from completing this book is that I need to open myself to new things. I had never thought I’d write a young adult novel, or that I’d have so much fun doing it. Now it’s common practice for me to write outside of my usual limitations when I’ve reached a dry spell. I read things that wouldn’t have caught my eye before. I try to expand my way of thinking, which leads to expanding my way of writing.
Cole: Did you initially begin writing the book with a young adult audience in mind?
DeStefano: When I began writing Wither, I intended it to be a short story, and I wasn’t giving too much thought to the audience. I knew that I had a young protagonist, but several of the story’s themes are quite dark, and so I thought it best to see how it all played out. However, I showed an early draft of the first several pages to my agent, and she believed it would be most suited for a YA audience.
Cole: One of the themes seems to be the consequences of tampering with human genetics. Is that correct and can you elaborate?
DeStefano: I think Wither can mean many different things for different readers, and none of those things would be wrong. In Wither, an attempt to save humanity causes its slow demise. It’s a world wherein everything is slowly dying, from flowers to buildings to people. Whether that’s a consequence, a parable, a forewarning or a mere source of entertainment is up to readers to decide.
Cole: Central to the story is the idea of young girls being taken into bondage and forced to marry. How and why did this concept work its way into the novel?
DeStefano: All I knew when I began this story was that my narrator was in a dark place and that she was frightened and wanted to go home. I wasn’t sure, yet, where she was headed. I kept writing to find that out. The things that happened to her, and the personalities of her sister wives, and even the fact that she had sister wives manifested as the story progressed.
Cole: Readers acquire a deeper understanding of Linden’s role in holding the young girls captive, his attitude toward them, and his relationship with his father. Can you talk about how his personality evolved as you wrote the story?
DeStefano: Initially, I did think Linden would be a sort of villain. But I came to learn that he’s not the one holding the girls captive; he’s bereft and naïve, and he lives in a fantasy world his father has created for him. Rhine, in playing the part of a good wife, recognizes this about him, which created one of my favorite dynamics within this story.
Cole: What was your most challenging aspect of writing the book? And can you identify and elaborate on a major turning point in the development of the novel?
DeStefano: The hardest part for me is always the beginning. I’m not much of an outliner, and I’m always plunging into unfamiliar waters. I’d say there were many major turning points, but the one that stands out the most is when I realized Linden, Rhine’s betrothed, was not so easy for Rhine to hate. Linden surprised me, but so did Rhine’s sister wives. Cecily, the youngest bride, is meddlesome and conniving, but hardly the villain I expected when I wrote her first lines. The oldest wife, Jenna, becomes an ally for Rhine, and the tragedy of her past surprised me. There are friendships where I expected enemies, and there’s love where I expected rivalry.
Cole: You quote from T.S. Eliot’s “The Hollow Men” in the opening: “This is the way the world ends. Not with a bang but a whimper.” Can you talk about the connection between Eliot’s line and the story?
DeStefano: Wither is what I like to refer to as a “what if” world. What if none of us had natural genes anymore? What if we knew at what age we would die? These sorts of thoughts flit through my head on any given day, and somehow the idea for Wither caught a snag in my brain. In Wither’s opening, several girls are huddled together in darkness, one body indistinguishable from the next, and that was very much the sort of image I had in my head when I first read “The Hollow Men.”
Cole: What can you tell readers about the upcoming books in the trilogy?
DeStefano: Only that the story isn’t over for any of these characters just yet.
Contributed by Dr. Pam Cole, Kennesaw State Univeristy