Author encourages young girls to write

By Stacey DeFever, Online Forty-Niner

Thursday, November 19, 1998

Valerie Tripp, author of The American Girls Collection, spoke to young girls, parents, faculty and students about her techniques to good writing Tuesday night in the University Library.

Tripp actively involved her young fans, who were crowded on the floor around the podium, in a discussion of her creative process when writing the historical fiction books about American girls Molly, Felicity, Josefina and Samantha.

Tripp said she wanted to create books about young girls living in different time eras.

Tripp carefully explained to the audience how she gets her story ideas.

"I can remember vividly what I was doing when I was exactly your age," she said to the attentive young listeners.

She said the things that happen to some of the characters in the books are things that actually happened to her.

Another way she gets her ideas is through research by traveling across the United States, talking to people, collecting details and being observant.

When Tripp researched the character Josefina, she went to New Mexico and asked the oldest women she could find what their mothers taught them. She used this information to create a character who had to carry water pails on her head and smooth warm mud and plaster over the walls of adobes.

Tripp asked young audience members to stand up and act as though they were throwing large wads of mud onto a wall, to smooth it out and then to sit as though they were sliding down the top of the muddy adobe on their behinds.

"The last place I get my ideas is hard to describe. It's a wondrous and magical place called my imagination," Tripp said.

Tripp showed them the first draft of one of her books, which was covered with yellow notes and markings.

She said not one of the comments from her editor on the draft was positive.

She said writing is a long process and can be very difficult, but she encouraged the young audience members not to give up.

Even after a number of drafts, the editorial process, creating the illustrations and publishing the books, the author said they were not finished.

"The book isn't finished until you unwrap it and finish the story," Tripp said.