But I got through it with a sense of humor, so I relived a lot of the stuff going through it with Ross. I wanted Ross’s perspective on things to be entertaining it’s a tough read if it’s just the awful stuff. Striking that balance was the hardest part.
You still see where things are ridiculous. I wanted to show the funny parts because it doesn’t seem like something that could be funny, but, when you’re going through something awful, it doesn’t turn off the funny part of your brain.
How did you strike a balance between funny and serious when writing Wink? Given the subject matter, did you find it more difficult to inject humor here than in your previous work? He just attacked it in this way that was meant to be inspiring, but, I wondered, where’s the part where he’s curled up on the couch crying? Or when it just all gets on top of you and you freak out? The anger is very real. I think two days after his brain surgery, he went out and rode 50 miles on his bike. He has this take no prisoners, “I’m going to beat this thing” attitude. Lance Armstrong goes at cancer like a superhuman. It’s a great book it was just that, in its own weird way, it made me feel worse. One of the books that I read when I was going through cancer was Lance Armstrong’s It’s Not About the Bike. Why was it important to you that you depict Ross’s frustration and resentment? This story is about kindness, but it’s also about anger. I had just finished writing another middle grade novel, so it all kind of clicked. I thought about how awkward that would be for a kid. In Wink, Ross has to wear a hat everywhere, which I had to do, too, but as a 35 year old it wasn’t that weird. She had some friends fall away, and it was pretty clear to me that it was because they didn’t know how to handle. I saw how much she went through that I didn’t, especially in a social respect. I was able to talk to her about it it’s like we were both in this weird club. She was a soccer player and it took her out from that. Then my best friend’s daughter, who was a freshman in high school, found out she had cancer in her leg. At one time, I considered doing a graphic novel or even having my characters from the strip go through it, but I never found the right tone or was happy with it. I kicked around the idea of writing a memoir or an adult novel. I continued to do the strip all through the treatments, and I always thought there was something there about humor and being forced to be funny every day. When I went through my cancer experience, 14 years ago now, I was doing my comic strip Big Top. Why did you decide to write this story, a fictional account of something you experienced in real life as an adult, from the perspective of a seventh grader?
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