Ten years ago I wrote my first novel, The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants. I had no idea what to expect. Well, that's not true. I expected it would sell a few thousand copies, that I would continue on with my job and my life, and that I would forever feel proud that I had published a book. My mother kindly set up my one and only bookstore appearance for the publication--and then she actually did the reading for me, because I had a swollen throat and a fever of 102 that day. The audience consisted of a high school friend, a few old family friends, and a couple of people who just wanted a place to sit and read. In the Q&A period my dad asked the one question, and my mom served cookies in the shape of pants.
Things were different then. Young Adult publishing was in the doldrums. Little by little the book was passed around from girl to girl and crawled up the bestseller lists until it became a success. Walking though an airport I saw a girl reading it, and I was frankly amazed. What I hadn't expected was that people would actually read the book. I was struck by the fact that this girl, a stranger, was joining me in this imagined space, in this story that felt so personal. She was sharing these characters with me, but for her these girls looked and spoke in a way unique to her imagination. She was picturing the places I had described, but they looked different to her than they did to me. She was adding her interior life to mine.
When the book was made into a movie, I was further struck by sharing the book with a screenwriter, a director, and actors, among others. Each actor understood her character in her own way. Each performance revealed some quality of the character that I hadn't recognized. By now I feel as though the characters of the sisterhood belong to a lot of people. And that is perhaps the greatest joy in bringing them back again. For readers of the earlier books, I am eager to share our lives again now that we are older and our perspective has changed. For new readers, I am eager to create this fictional world together in Sisterhood Everlasting.
Things were different then. Young Adult publishing was in the doldrums. Little by little the book was passed around from girl to girl and crawled up the bestseller lists until it became a success. Walking though an airport I saw a girl reading it, and I was frankly amazed. What I hadn't expected was that people would actually read the book. I was struck by the fact that this girl, a stranger, was joining me in this imagined space, in this story that felt so personal. She was sharing these characters with me, but for her these girls looked and spoke in a way unique to her imagination. She was picturing the places I had described, but they looked different to her than they did to me. She was adding her interior life to mine.
When the book was made into a movie, I was further struck by sharing the book with a screenwriter, a director, and actors, among others. Each actor understood her character in her own way. Each performance revealed some quality of the character that I hadn't recognized. By now I feel as though the characters of the sisterhood belong to a lot of people. And that is perhaps the greatest joy in bringing them back again. For readers of the earlier books, I am eager to share our lives again now that we are older and our perspective has changed. For new readers, I am eager to create this fictional world together in Sisterhood Everlasting.
