{"id":60081,"date":"2025-01-22T09:06:33","date_gmt":"2025-01-22T14:06:33","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/terribleminds.com\/ramble\/?p=60081"},"modified":"2025-01-22T09:06:33","modified_gmt":"2025-01-22T14:06:33","slug":"jennifer-doktorski-five-things-i-learned-writing-finding-normal","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/terribleminds.com\/ramble\/2025\/01\/22\/jennifer-doktorski-five-things-i-learned-writing-finding-normal\/","title":{"rendered":"Jennifer Doktorski: Five Things I Learned Writing Finding Normal"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
\"\"<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

There are five towns in the U.S. named \u201cNormal\u201d and seventeen-year-old Gemma Leonardo plans on visiting every one of them. Right after she escapes Children\u2019 s Hospital in Harrisburg, where she\u2019 s being treated for anorexia. Enter Lucas Polizzi, a high school wrestler with bulimia and, more importantly to Gemma, a getaway car. Sick of being told they\u2019re sick, Gemma and Lucas team up for a themed road trip to \u201cthe Normals\u201d on one condition\u2014 they can\u2019 t mention food, ever. But as each passing mile puts their lives at greater risk, they soon realize it is their growing love and friendship, not a place on a map, that will put them on the path to recovery.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

\n\n\n\n

Story inspiration comes from the strangest places<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

The U.S. is replete with weirdly-named towns. As someone who grew up in Nutley, New Jersey and drove past Intercourse, Pennsylvania on my way to and from college every semester, I kind of knew this. But when I began pouring over the pages of a Rand McNally Road Atlas<\/em> and typing \u201cU.S. towns with unusual names\u201d into search engines, I discovered\u2014in addition to the five towns named Normal\u2014there\u2019s Ding Dong, Texas; Booger Hole, West Virginia; Boring, Oregon; Toad Suck, Arkansas (don\u2019t worry they also have Hope); and Santa Claus, Indiana. The latter inspired my characters to take a detour enroute to Normal, Illinois. Having them drive along Candy Cane and Jingle Bell lanes and visit the post office on Kris Kringle Circle provided excellent fodder for plot and dialogue.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Writing for a living is a lot like a road trip`<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Some of my favorite stories to read, watch, and write, are road trips\u2014Lonesome Dove<\/em>, Thelma and<\/em> Louise, Amy and Roger\u2019s Epic Detour<\/em>, and of course, Wanderers<\/em>. My first young adult novel was about a teen girl who goes on a cross-country road trip to avoid violating a restraining order after accidentally blowing up her ex-boyfriend\u2019s car. It was a breezy, summer romance published by Simon Pulse. The three novels that followed were also set in the summer and considered beach reads. One was published by Henry Holt Books for Young Readers, the other two by Sourcebooks. Eleven years after my debut, I tried to switch lanes, and while my latest novel is also a road trip it\u2019s not easy, breezy, or summery. In my journey as a published author, as my writing got better, my publishers got smaller. I went from having an agent for 14 years, to selling my latest book without one. I\u2019m not sure what point I\u2019m at on my writing journey. Am I at a rest area on the New Jersey Turnpike? Somewhere in the middle of America? Approaching my exit? I do know that this latest book has taught me that I need to take a deep breath and enjoy the ride.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The way appears<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

The poet Rumi said, \u201cAs you start to walk on the way, the way appears.\u201d To put it in Dory-speak, \u201cJust keep swimming, swimming, swimming.\u201d Not sure if Rumi would agree, but that\u2019s my take. Writing this book taught me perseverance. To wake up every day and do the work of a writer. Sometimes that means sitting in front of my laptop, sometimes it means taking a long walk, or people watching and eavesdropping and jotting down ideas on my phone. I\u2019ve also started writing freelance non-fiction articles again. Until this week, I last published a book in 2018, though I\u2019ve written three full manuscripts since then, including the one that became FINDING NORMAL.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The journey is better with a ride or die and a baby raccoon<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

My critique partners were with me every step of the way while drafting this novel. They are my ride or dies who hold me accountable. At the beginning of their road trip the two main characters in FINDING NORMAL, Gemma and Lucas, find an orphaned baby raccoon. To some people, raccoons are disease-carrying, kitten-killing, dumpster-diving trash pandas, but to me, with their five-fingered \u201chands\u201d and black masks to prevent nighttime glare, they\u2019re more like the ambidextrous (times two) quarterbacks of the animal world. Mama raccoons are fiercely protective of their kits (babies), who stay with them until they\u2019re a year old, and researchers have found these adorable bandits are highly intelligent problem solvers. Whether or not they\u2019re smarter than your average bear is up for debate, but their intelligence is on par with rhesus macaques monkeys, which leads me to the last thing I\u2019ve learned.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Don\u2019t make eye contact with the monkeys<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

This is something I didn\u2019t necessarily learn from writing this book, but something I\u2019ve learned from writing books in general, and from my critique partner who recently visited Bali. Upon checking into her motel, she and her partner were warned to not make eye contact with the long-tailed macaques on the property. \u201cThey see it as a sign of aggression,\u201d she was told. Similarly, author-types who value their stomach linings and sanity should not engage with reviewers, booktokers, bookstagrammers, random Goodreads folks, and any other readers who take to social media to insult a novel that may have taken you six years to complete and feels more like your third child than a story. Take it from someone who learned early on, no good can come from engaging. Even when it\u2019s obvious they\u2019ve never read your book and\/or published a review that got key facts (like the main character\u2019s name) wrong. Do what I tell my dog Molly when she\u2019s running around the house with a spent toilet paper roll in her mouth. Leave it!<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\n\n\n\n

Jennifer Salvato Doktorski received a 2024 Fellowship from the New Jersey State Council on the Arts. She is the author of five young adult novels including, FAMOUS LAST WORDS (Holt), a Bank Street College Best Children’s Book of the Year; THE SUMMER AFTER YOU & ME (Sourcebooks), a YALSA Teens’ Top Ten nominee; and FINDING NORMAL (Fitzroy Books 2025). She has published articles and essays in national magazines including Cosmopolitan<\/em> and began her writing career on the obit desk of a local newspaper, where she learned the importance of deadlines and developed a lifelong love of news and coffee. She lives with her family in New Jersey and spends summers “down the shore,” where everything is always all right.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Finding Normal<\/strong>: Bookshop.org<\/a> | B&N<\/a> | Amazon<\/a> | Asbury Book Coop<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Jen Doktorski<\/strong>: Website<\/a> | Instagram<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

There are five towns in the U.S. named \u201cNormal\u201d and seventeen-year-old Gemma Leonardo plans on visiting every one of them. Right after she escapes Children\u2019 s Hospital in Harrisburg, where she\u2019 s being treated for anorexia. Enter Lucas Polizzi, a high school wrestler with bulimia and, more importantly to Gemma, a getaway car. Sick of […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-60081","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"hentry","6":"category-theramble","8":"no-featured-image"},"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pv7MR-fD3","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/terribleminds.com\/ramble\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/60081","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/terribleminds.com\/ramble\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/terribleminds.com\/ramble\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/terribleminds.com\/ramble\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/terribleminds.com\/ramble\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=60081"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/terribleminds.com\/ramble\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/60081\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":60084,"href":"https:\/\/terribleminds.com\/ramble\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/60081\/revisions\/60084"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/terribleminds.com\/ramble\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=60081"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/terribleminds.com\/ramble\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=60081"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/terribleminds.com\/ramble\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=60081"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}