3xA MA: Elisa Ludwig

I feel like authors deserve so much from the readers. I believe that authors are people who really connect with us. It was actually an author who I "sorta" owe my life to. Authors and their words make us feel and they can help us.
In this event, I want to get to know the authors. I’d like to get interviews or blog posts about THEM in connection to their book. Who is the mind behind each author?

For each post, I leave links to connect with the author. Please take the time to use one of those links and leave a message for each author, if you can. It can be towards the book or it can be something as easy as “I love the post you wrote on Out of Time! <33”

Whoo! Elisa Ludwig is the author of Pretty Crooked and Pretty Sly! Funny story is I tried to read Pretty Sly and only realized I was reading the series out of order halfway through it. Hehe!

Route to Author

There are, of course, many different routes to becoming an author, but my route was pretty straightforward. I just knew, from almost as soon as I could read, that I wanted to write. Books to me were magic, which meant the people who wrote them were practically wizards! Reading was the only way I wanted to spend a Saturday. I loved thinking about what made people tick. I loved hearing characters' voices in my head. When I go back to my oldest journals from third and fourth grade, I'm already talking about my plans to publish books. Later, as life got a little more confusing, reading and writing was the best way to make sense of things. By the time I got to college, the urge was so strong that I decided to major in English and writing. That kind of sealed the deal.

There were plenty of ups and downs — plenty of rejections along the way!— but also lots of people who encouraged me to keep going. After a while it didn't feel like a choice. I wasn't about to back down. So the passion was there, the drive was there. It was really just a matter of deciding what I would write and for whom. It was an author of adult books who suggested I try writing for teens, and it was the best advice I ever got, because reading YA took me right back to the time in my life when books mattered most. After I wrote my first book, it wasn't long before things fell into place.

If you are an aspiring writer, I have a few pieces of advice. 1) Write, write, and write some more. No one gets it right at the beginning! Most of us work pretty hard at it, and that never stops. 2) Read all that you can. The reason everyone says this is because it's true. You need to read to be a better writer. 3) Save records of everything that happens to you. Even if you don't end up writing for a younger audience, having a journal or another account of your life will be very useful to you down the line. 4) Enjoy the process. Write because you love to do it—and that way when the going gets tougher, you will continue to stick with it.

Thank you so much, Nova, for the opportunity to write this post and for spreading the word about great books!

Aw, thanks Elisa! It was a lot of fun having you here! I love hearing about authors and their road to publishing, it makes me all sorts of happy; not because I want to be an author, but because anything can really happen! (*starts to sing Ellie Goulding*)

Enter the giveaway below! Thanks for checking out my blog and remember:  
Be kind to one another. - Ellen

For more giveaways (because these giveaways really rock) and awesome author posts, be sure to check out the opening post with the schedule of authors so far and links! Click here for the opening post and if you're awesome.

Author Info

Elisa's Facebook | Goodreads | Goodreads for her Books | Twitter | Website |

I’ve always known I wanted to be a writer. When I was nine, I founded my own newspaper, the modestly titled The Elisa Bulletin, which I printed out on a dot matrix printer and sold for ten cents a pop (there was a discounted rate for family). Some of my groundbreaking reporting included a story on the Rubik’s Cube trend and Duran Duran record reviews.

The newspaper schedule was too hectic to maintain, what with all the Duran Duran records coming out. So I started writing stories about ghosts and haunted houses and ordinary girl protagonists who were a lot like me.

As middle school turned to high school and the world became increasingly confusing, I started writing poems. Lots and lots of poems. They are painful to read now. But they helped.

In college, I took an amazing creative writing class with the author Beverly Coyle and rediscovered my love of making up stuff. I even went and got a Masters degree in making up stuff. When I graduated, I found a job at a newspaper, where I couldn’t make up stuff or review Duran Duran, so I wrote a lot about food. (I still do.) Finally, one summer I took a workshop with the author Julia Glass, who suggested I try writing for teens.

I started reading and rereading all the YA fiction I could get my hands on. I remembered how much I loved the teen books that were out when I was that age: Writers like Robert Cormier, Lois Duncan, Christopher Pike, Paul Zindel, Paula Danzinger, Norma Klein, Katherine Patterson, and, of course, Judy Blume. (If you haven’t read them, check them out!)

It all came together then. I was like, Writing! For teens! Of course! So here I am with this dream job. I feel really lucky every day. Thank you for helping me make it a reality.

Other things I like, besides writing and reading:
Making ice cream, biking, hip-hop, playing bocce, growing flowers, flea markets, postpunk, 1960s movies, chocolate, Cape Cod, condiments, Britcoms, snow, the smell of lavender, traveling and Scrabble.

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