From Scissorhands to Spoons

The idea for The Girl with a Spoon for a Soul came to me in bits in pieces, but it started during a graduate seminar I took on disability studies and literature. Rather than choosing a stuffy topic for my semester paper (although I like stuffy papers as much as the next girl), I wrote mine on something fun: Edward Scissorhands and How the Grinch Stole Christmas! Lonely outcasts isolated upon mountain tops, two picture-perfect little towns at each mountain's base, and havoc—oh so much havoc—wreaked when the two collide. In Edward Scissorhands, of course, the hero doesn't win. At the end of his tale, he is confined to a timeless, ageless existence in his dark castle. The Grinch, on the other hand, seems to win big time: he grows a heart, joins the Whos, and he carves that glorious roast beast. The first is a tale that teaches viewers about the harm unmitigated conformism and consumerism can have on outsiders (and insiders, too), while the second shows us that kindness—rather than consumerism—is at the heart of community. Not unworthy lessons, but something seemed to be missing: Edward's growth and the Whos' growth!

When the time came to write my thesis, I mulled it over. I started an academic paper because writing those was my strength, but I'd always wanted to write a juvenile novel, and my program offered me the option to submit a joint creative-academic project in lieu of a tradition thesis—so I took the leap! I began with my work on ol' Edward and Mr. Grinch, and away the story grew, like a vine out of control. My character, I knew, would begin her story atop a lonely hilltop—but hers would be no dark or crumbling castle. Instead, hers would be wonderfully, amazingly perfect. And rather than descending into a little haven of pastels and rounded corners like Edward and the Grinch, she would leave her hilltop to discover its inverse: a gothic, twisting and turning village of grays and shadows, of ancient leaning buildings and nocturnal citizens who...on the outside, at least, sometimes resemble our dear fiends, Edward Scissorhands and the Grinch. What would happen to such a girl in such an upside-down world? My brain flew faster than my fingers could soar, and Nerma, Small Hours, and a young boy named October took form on the page.

Why a Spoon? And what does it have to do with a soul? And what might these have to do with a slug's slimy tail, an oracle, and Dracula's missing fangs? One wonders....