SARAH DESSEN

I was so thrilled that I was having a girl, because I just am so girly myself, but I think the teenage years are going to be very interesting.

When I was a teen, I was never really into the captain of the football team or the student body president. The guys I liked were quirky and different: They listened to music I'd never heard of, never had lunch or gas money, and could always make you laugh.

I've changed in my sympathies since I've become a mother myself. In high school I went through a period where I was close with my mom and had to break with her in order to find myself and come back. Since that was my experience, that's often what happens in my books.

I love writing about the summer between high school and college. It's the last gasp of really being a teen.

I'm famously secretive about my work. Nobody reads my books till they're finished.

I was always a big reader, mostly because my parents were.

On the whole, I think I spent a lot of high school just trying to stay under the radar: I don't think I was all that memorable.

You're not supposed to have it all figured out in high school. If you knew it all, and it was the best, it's all downhill from there.

I don't live in New York or California. I'm in the grocery store, at the park with my kids, and I'm a normal person. I'm feeding my chickens and agonizing about my next book!

I love YA, and it's been a really good fit for me. But at some point, I would like to try something else: a collection of short stories, or writing about something other than high school. A lot has happened to me since I was eighteen.

I'm all about shrimpburgers, reading, and going to the beach.

I write thank-you notes the minute I throw the wrapping paper away.

In high school, I was lucky enough to have a big group of girlfriends that have really inspired a lot of the stories in my books. I'm still close with my friends from that time, so it's never very hard to put myself back into that place, that voice.

I think part of the problem sometimes is that there's so much happening in my books, to whittle it down into a single script is hard.

If I had to pick, I'd say my favorite book is 'A Prayer For Owen Meany', by John Irving.

Teenagers are a great audience and they are fearless about asking what they want to know.

Each time, I think I'm never going to write another book. It never gets easier.

I've never envied the person who had to put my books together in one script.

I always wished I could move around and switch schools. It was hard to have these radical transformations. You'd think, 'I will be a totally different person tomorrow,' but it never worked.

I was born in 1970 in Illinois, but all the life I remember I've spent in Chapel Hill, N.C.

Maybe other writers have perfect first drafts, but I am not one of them. I always try to get the book as tight as I can, but you reach a point as the author where you have lost all perspective.

My books are so tame!

I can't sit and twiddle my thumbs. I have to start writing even if it's miserable some days.

I think my mother characters have changed a lot since Sasha was born, just because I understand what a hard job it is now, and I'm coming at it from another angle - like you just love and care about this person so much, and just want to protect them from everything.

I'm really happy to have the chance to talk about the editing process. It's something that I think doesn't get the weight it deserves, especially with the rise of self-publishing.