"Believe it or not, as a child I wanted to be an architect. I always liked art, and I loved to draw. I took art classes at Mount St. Vincent University, aka the Mount. But when it actually came down to choosing a career, I found myself leaning toward teaching. Both my mother and grandmother were teachers. I went to Acadia University and took my BA in English. Then I came home, went to the Mount and got my teaching degree, which at that time was still only one year. When I did graduate as a teacher, it was really just a bad time. You couldn't swing a dead cat without hitting an unemployed teacher."

"I went to Acadia first because it was that 'I can't wait to get out of here' kind of thing, but also because my mom wanted me to. She had never lived in residence and always thought she'd missed something. Now, having done it, I think there are arguments for both sides. The first year was kind of a write off, but I managed to squeak through. The summer before my second year, when I was home, I met my husband. So when I went back to school in the fall, I actually studied. Basically because my boyfriend was in Halifax, what else was I going to do? I think I got more out of the actual educational part of university. I enjoyed my classes and did pretty well. My mom fell sick the summer after I graduated, before I started the education program at the Mount, and she died that fall. I'm glad that I ended up at the Mount because I was home with my dad and sister. My mother was only 46, and I was 19 at the time."

"Ideally, I wanted to be an elementary school teacher, but I ended up subbing at both levels, elementary and junior high. Now, I could swing junior high. I'm not so intimidated, but fresh out of university at age 20, personally, I was not ready to take on a class of grade nines. In a way, I didn't feel much older than them. I didn't get from substituting what I thought teaching was going to be like, and it wasn't the kids' fault. As a substitute, you were just sort of whisked in and whisked out, and you never really had time to bond with the students. I did work in a preschool where I had the children who next year would be going into primary. I loved that job, and I probably would have stayed forever if the pay wasn't so dismal. I'd even like to go back now and do something in a school, but just work one-on-one with children, whether it's reading recovery or something like that."

"So teaching was my try for a sort of career, but I also worked at the Keg while going to university. I met my husband there. It was a great place to work because I could go to Acadia, come home and work there on Christmas and summer vacations. Had I been writing back then, working at the Keg would have been a perfect job. You have the whole day to yourself as it doesn't open until the evening, and you only work nights. I worked there part-time right up until my second child was born. A total of fifteen years. I loved waitressing, and I was really good at it, if I do say so myself."

"When I was young, I totally loved the Bobbsey Twins and books like that, but then I went through this comic book stage. My dad loved Archie comics. We had stacks and stacks of Archie comic digests. They were pretty thick, so you felt like you were reading something substantial. I would pore over those comics and copy the drawings because I loved to draw. I probably read more than maybe my friends did at that age, which really isn't saying much. I read a lot now. I love to read. I just feel so happy that my kids both love to read. Though my son, William, doesn't like to read anything with a girl in it, I was really touched when he actually read my first book, Rattled. At the time he was in grade 6, and his comment was, 'Mom, I don't know what I thought it was going to be, but it's just so professional.'"

"I'm a real newbie to writing. I went though that phase a few years ago of, 'Well, I could be the next J. K. Rowling. I could write a book and be famous. I have a sob story.' After my mom passed away and my dad remarried (many years later), they were cleaning out the attic of my family home, and they asked me if I wanted my mom's jewellery box which basically was filled with trinkets and stuff. Inside a little gathered pouch there was a little bag with six identical necklaces, and nobody knew why they were there or what they were for. So in my head I just started making up this story of an explanation for them. I didn't have a laptop then. I wrote the whole book by hand and then got a friend to type it up for me."

"My husband was friends with a lady who owned a bookstore, and she offered to read my 'book' for me and to write comments. She was very nice, but it was the first thing I had written, and it was really a mess. I remember getting back her comments, going and sitting on the edge of the bathtub and sobbing a little. Part of what she had written was a note saying, 'Take a children's writing course at the Writers Federation of Nova Scotia.' She had also written the phone number and the course title and added, 'Take the course with Norene Smiley.' I don't like doing anything out of my comfort zone; it takes a lot, but I went and called right away before I had a chance to think about it or talk myself out of it. After the first night at the course, I went and sat in my car and just cried. It was like, 'I'm so out of my league. What am I doing here?' There were real writers and illustrators in the group. But I continued on and loved it. "

"In Norene's workshop, we would have to read aloud. I would turn my chair around and have my back to people because I found it so hard. Reading my work to others is still not my favourite thing to do. I can do it now but just barely. Nonetheless, I learned so much in that course, and it totally changed my life. You get some positive feedback and began to think, 'Maybe I can do this.' While taking Norene's workshop, I worked on the story about the necklaces, and I actually entered it in the Atlantic Writers competition where it came third in the YA category. That was the best positive reinforcement."

"Of course, the course ends, and then what do you do? It's like you have a panic attack because nobody's making you write now and you don't have a class to go to. Thankfully, Norene offered another session, and so I signed up. There was a small group, the Scribblers, already within that class who had formed a writing group of their own, and they asked me to join. They were actually taking Norene's workshop trolling for new members because the group had lost a few so they were sussing it out to see who might be a good addition. To me, that was like winning an Oscar. 'You want me!?' I joined up with them about five years ago. We meet every Thursday night and keep the small talk to a minimum. We all bring in something to read. It`s usually about a chapter, and everyone gets a copy. We read it aloud, and everyone takes notes while you read. We sit and discuss, and the nice thing is that you keep all those notes. The writing group's like a Master Card commercial: 'You just can`t put a price on it.'"

"The first thing that I got published was a short story, 'A Nana Mary Christmas,' that appeared in a collection, A Maritime Christmas. Nimbus put a call out for Christmas stories. I'm lucky enough to have a very lovely, but dysfunctional family (as everyone does). The main character in the story is sort of based on a combination of three female older relatives in my life. Of course, none of them would think it was them. They would think it was somebody else. 'That sounds just like...' It was just a funny piece, and I loved it. It still makes me laugh."

Asked why she began writing for YAs, Lisa responds, "I originally thought, 'I'm going to be a children's writer, and I'm going to write picture books.' However, the reality is that not a lot of publishers take picture books. They're really hard to get accepted, and, frankly, I was not very good at writing them. I tried a couple of times, and everyone was going, 'No...not really working'. At the time, Lexi, my daughter, was in her mid-teens, and we were quite close. She had a really great group of friends, and, if I wanted to talk or spend time with them, they usually let me."

"I found it easy to relate to them, and I also found that what they had to say was interesting. I can't remember what I did five minute ago, but I can remember perfectly what it was like being in high school— the angst, the uncomfortableness, all the drama and the stuff that went on. When I sat down to write, that's sort of how it came out. I could be there in those adolescent years again. I don't know if I've really changed that much, like deep inside, from when I was in high school. Maybe I'm a little bit smarter, or I can probably cook better, but I don't know if I'm that different. Lexi's friends read Rattled and went, 'Lexi, your mom totally wrote that book about you. That's totally you.' And my adult friends read it and said, 'It's like you're sitting right beside me and telling me the story' so they think it's me. And then, of course, my friends who have known me since forever, go, 'You're every character in that book.' So, to answer the question, I think the YA area's where I'm comfortable right now. Some people say, 'Write for adults,' but I don't know if I really want to go there yet."

As to her decision to write a mystery, Lisa explains, "As I said earlier, my best friend lives right next door to me. Something happened to her husband when he was a baby. I can't say what it is because it hints to the plot of Rattled, but it always stuck in my head. I couldn't stop thinking, 'What if?' Of course, Rattled morphed into something totally different, but it did come from that actual event."

Describing how she wrote Rattled, Lisa explains, "I guess they call it 'writing it like a clothesline' which is to say I wrote it all out of order. You write a chapter, and then you 'stick it on a clothesline.' When you have the chapters all up, you rearrange them the way that you want them to go.

The very first chapter I ever wrote for Rattled was the trip to the waterfront and the gift shop, so I kind of worked out from the middle. In the end, it just came together. Having the writing group was good because, when you're going, 'Well, how can I....? What would be a good reason for....?', they'll all brainstorm and throw out ideas. The title, Rattled, was not mine. I never have a good title. That`s harder than writing the book. One of the girls in the writing group came up with it."

"It was during my first cycle with the writing group that I wrote Rattled. I started it with the group in September, finished it in June, and edited it over the summer. I sent it out in August to Nimbus who took it in October, 2008. Unfortunately, when they took it, they already had their lineup for the next year, so it was a bit of a wait. But I knew I'd been incredibly lucky, so I couldn't complain. The nice thing about working with a writing group is that, by the time your stuff's gone through the group and the publisher gets it, it`s pretty tight. Nimbus wanted an extra chapter at the end before the epilogue, just to tie things up. I think the only other changes were that Nimbus wanted the girls doing a few things that might be considered more mature activities, stuff like getting caught drinking at a party, having a part-time job or going to the mall. I had been dreading the editing stage, and then, when it actually came, I thought, `That`s okay. I can do that`. They had a way of making everything sound easy—maybe because they knew I was a rookie, plus everything they suggested did make the book better."

"One thing I`ve learned is that you can`t be a princess about your writing. It`s hard to take the critiques sometimes, but, in the end, I always found the changes were for the best, whether it came from an editor or my writing group. You also have to know when to stop. There's always the risk of editing yourself to death. Even when I think something`s done, if I start to read it again, there`s no way I`m not making a change. There does have to come a point where you just have to say, 'Step away from the manuscript.'"

"The prologue and epilogue in Rattled were my ideas. In one of the workshops I'd taken, we were given an exercise where you just got a word and you had to write the definition of the word. You couldn't use the word in the definition, and so someone had to get what the word was solely from what you said. I can`t remember what my word was, but I do remember that what I did wasn`t very good. On the drive home, because I always rehashed everything, I thought, 'Ì wish I`d gotten a word like 'indifference', and then I would have said, "The blood pooled on the floor" and I'd have the person worrying about how to clean it up as a opposed to worrying about the person lying dead on the floor. Though it`s probably changed a million times since then, that`s where the prologue came from. As to the epilogue, Ì like closure at the end of the book. I want it wrapped up, and I want to be satisfied. I think everything I`ve written has an epilogue."

"Someone once told me, 'If you like the story arc of a certain book, or you like the way it works, just copy it - not the story, but the way it's structured.' I`ve read a number of books that have that sort of beginning, and then it goes back and works its way up to the beginning again. One, in particular that I recall is The Secret History, by Donna Tartt. It started with this weird incident, a body, and then it goes back and tells the story until you return again to the weird incident, the body. I like that idea and so that`s what I seem to do."

"I guess I look back at Rattled through rose-coloured glasses because it was so much fun to write. I just loved writing the sisters, Lydia and Jilly, and I wouldn`t mind writing something else with them. I did have some problems about how the girls would get the information on the computer without my giving it all away to the reader. Then my editor at Nimbus said, 'Oh, they would be on Facebook too.' At the time, I wasn`t on Facebook. I`d be yelling at Lexi, `So, if I go on Facebook and look up somebody, what am I going to see? Like, would I see a picture?' I found all the computer stuff the hardest because I don`t really use the computer for anything except for writing. But now I`ve got a website and I'm on Facebook, so I`m sort of getting a little bit better."

A coffee cake is mentioned in Rattled, and Lisa has added the recipe to her website. "I actually made the coffee cake and brought it to the workshop. It's my mom`s coffee cake, and everyone was going, 'You have to include the recipe in the book,' but I couldn`t see that happening, and so the website was the place. I make it all the time as did my mom. It`s really a good cake. You can put pecans in if you want, but I`m not a nut person."

Describing her approach to writing, Lisa says, "I keep my laptop in my kitchen. I`m not the type who can sit down and go, 'Okay, I've got three hours. I`m just going to sit down and write.' I can`t do that. I`ve got music on, the TV too. I might get a paragraph out, and then I`ll get distracted, I`ll go and clean out a closet, or I`ll talk to somebody on the phone. They might say something funny, and I`ll think, `That`s good. That would totally work in the story.' I found that happened a lot with Lexi and her friends. I`d listen to their conversation and write a whole chapter around it."

"So, I`m not very disciplined in my writing, I`m really not. Two days a week I make my husband take the car so that I`m stuck home and can`t go anywhere. A lot of things come to me when I'm just doing simple things around the house. I might be washing the dishes, and, all of a sudden, I'll go, 'Oh, that`s it' and, because the laptop`s in the kitchen, I just go over and do it right there. I do find the internet handy. I have the thesaurus and dictionary right there. There are times when it`s like, `I cannot use a tag like "snapped" one more time. I need another word,' especially because I love to write dialogue and a lot of my writing is just dialogue. Actually it`s not so much a problem now because I don`t use a lot of tags any more. I figure people can follow the conversation, and you don`t always have to put `he said, she said, she snapped, he retorted' or whatever. You really don`t need them half the time."

"After a number of years, I went back to that original story about the necklaces—still a family mystery for sure. It's set in the 1970s because that would be me when I was 12 or 13. It takes place in River John, a real place up past Truro on the Northumberland Strait. I did submit it to a publisher shortly after Rattled came out. It was rejected. Because it was my first 'story', it will always be special to me, but my head is full of other ideas right now so I think I have to leave it for a bit. And that's okay, it's not going anywhere."

"One time my book club 'won' Donna Morrisey for an evening. We were talking, and she said, `Sometimes it`s not the first thing you write that gets published. Sometime you write the more market appeal book, and you get that published. Then, once you get your name out there, that's when you bring out your 'baby' and have a better chance of getting it looked at.' So her comment`s always in the back of my mind."

"My second book, Live to Tell is a mystery too. I don't know why I stick to that genre, but that's just the way it comes out. Live to Tell (originally called, In Memory) is a little bit edgier than Rattled. Libby, the central character, who has been drinking and then driving after a party, is in an accident, but she doesn`t remember what happened. She may also have had sex; but she doesn`t remember that either. As she was the driver, she gets charged. I sent it to a publisher who really liked it and actually thought the character was better developed than in Rattled. But it's contents were too edgy for their audience. They also thought the plot needed one more twist. And they were right!"

"I took their advice, added another twist, and put it through the group again. It didn't take too long because the bones of the story were already there. My writing group was amazing. They didn't care that they'd already heard the story before. Their help and suggestions were invaluable. There's nothing like thinking you've got it all figured out, and then six other people saying, 'No...that would never happen like that.'

"Honestly, I couldn't do it without my writing group. If it wasn't for them, I'd be back on chapter four of some random story going nowhere fast. If anyone wants advice about writing, the first thing I'd tell them is, 'Find yourself a writing group.' How to keep at it and stay focussed? 'Find yourself a writing group.'

How to get red wine stains out of your carpet? 'Find yourself a writing group (one of them will know).' It's my answer to everything."

"So once Live to Tell was all spiffed up, I fired it off to four different publishers. Dancing Cat contacted me fairly quickly. I received rejection letters from the other three publishers." Again, I really got lucky—it landed in the right person's hands. I often wonder if it was because they asked for the whole manuscript. Sometimes I think a story like Live to Tell, you kind of need the whole story to like...get the whole story."

"The original manuscript didn't open with Libby waking up in the hospital--that was actually chapter 7. I had a whole preamble of all the events leading up to the party. But Dancing Cat liked the idea of starting the story with her waking up and then weaving in the important stuff from those earlier chapters. It was probably the most challenging thing I'd ever done as far as an 'edit'. Again it goes back to not being too princessy about your writing, because in the end, I think they were right, and I was really happy with it."

"Dancing Cat is located in Toronto, and, at first, I was freaked out about doing everything long distance. I couldn't imagine how it was going to work. But it was great—they were great. I still can't believe it was all done via email. I'm really excited for September and the release."

"Right now I'm working on another mystery kind of story. It's (at the moment) titled, Twisted. It's quite dark and, you guessed it, twisted. As I tend to write for my daughter and she's getting older, the main character is 18 in this one. It's mostly set in Halifax and about weird relationships within a family. It's the first time I haven't given my writing group the 'big picture', the story arc. I told them nothing about it. I just started reading it to them. I want to see if it unfolds the way I hope it will. Chapter twenty and so far so good."

"I love writing. I can`t ever see not doing it. Especially when you come to the end of something. It`s the excitement of, 'Oh, gosh I can`t believe it`s actually finished and I think it might not be half bad.'"

Books by Lisa Harrington:

• Live to Tell. Dancing Cat Books, 2012. Grades 7 and up.
• Rattled: A Mystery. Nimbus, 2010. Grades 5-9.

This article is based on an interview conducted in Halifax, October 15, 2010, and revised and updated July, 2012.

Visit Lisa's website at: http://www.lisaharrington.ca/