Jessica Brody’s path from reluctant reader to successful author zigzagged like the plot of her latest young adult novel, “Amelia Gray is Almost Okay.”
Like uprooted middle-schooler Amelia, Brody explored a variety of selves before settling into the pursuit of her real dream: writing stories that prove to young readers just how fun reading can be.
Brody said one of her favorite things from pre-pandemic days was when she regularly visited schools and one of her fans would tell her, “I hated to read until I found your book. I never finished a book but I read your book three times.”
The Vancouver author, 43, said she was exactly that sort of reader as a child — bored with the mandatory so-called classics, slow to make progress. She used to hate watching her classmates turn pages in big books during reading time at school, she said.
“The last thing I wanted to do was read for fun,” Brody said.
Oddly enough, though, the act of writing came remarkably easy to her. Maybe that’s because her father was an aspiring Hollywood screenwriter. When Brody was in second grade, she said, an assignment to write one paragraph turned into an effortless four pages.
“It just came naturally to me,” she said. “My teacher got so excited, she showed it to all the other teachers. I couldn’t understand why it was such a big deal.”
But Brody never thought writing could be a “real job.” She majored in economics and ended up in a job as a financial analyst at MGM, the Hollywood movie factory. When Sony bought MGM, the company laid her off.
That misfortune turned out to be an opportunity. Brody discovered lighter, funnier reading fare that wasn’t assigned in school and found her footing as a book lover. Inspired, she finished the novel she’d been nursing along for years, scored an agent and sold the book.
“That was the big dream, and it happened,” she said. “I’ve been writing incessantly ever since.”
Under pressure
At first she wrote for her adult peers, Brody said. But her agent thought one of her book pitches sounded less like a grownup story and more like a young adult romp. Brody accepted the challenge, sold that book and has never looked back.
Since then, Brody has been a YA writing machine, cranking out everything from middle-school comedies to sci-fi epics, all aimed at teens and tweens. Disney Press hired her to write novelizations of Disney stories about adventurous girls — and princesses.
“I think it’s because I’m stuck at age 13,” Brody said. “Twelve and 13 are really tumultuous times for kids. They are such formative years. I remember how hard it was.”
She said it’s “cathartic and fascinating” to relive those years in her imagination and explore paths she didn’t take.
That’s the plot of “Amelia Gray is Almost Okay,” Brody’s fourth novel intended for tween readers ages 9 through 12. A nomad thanks to her father’s job as a traveling hotel remodeler, 12-year-old Amelia has mastered a self-protective, attachment-avoiding lifestyle. Then the pair arrive in a small town where Dad decides to stay put. A radical change for them both, it’s also an opportunity for Amelia to grow roots and try out possible selves.
But who will she turn out to be: track star, student journalist or spotlight-seeking thespian? Amelia tests all three options, of course, in a middle-school dramedy of errors that packs a lighthearted lesson about staying true to yourself.
“I wanted to write a book about the concept of reinventing yourself,” Brody said. “I feel like kids and teens today are under so much pressure to be people they’re not, to fit into some sort of box.”
So she created a newcomer heroine who experiments with alter egos.
“She wants to find her place so she thinks, ‘If I invent myself three times I have three times the chance of fitting in,’ ” Brody said. “But she finds you don’t have to narrow yourself into one label. You don’t have to only be one person and you don’t have to be what everyone expects you to be.”
Post production
You can see Brody act that very part — three different parts, that is — in a clever marketing video for “Amelia Gray is Almost Okay.” In the video on her website, www.jessicabrody.com, three different Jessica Brodies (costumed as writer, athlete and theater hipster) bicker about plot possibilities before agreeing that the best story would combine them all.
“This goes back to my one-paragraph book report that became four pages,” Brody said with a chuckle. Her publisher requested a simple 30-second video. She and her husband, who also used to work in Hollywood, responded with a three-minute, three-character mini-play.
“I used to do book trailers for YouTube,” she said. “I would produce them like movie trailers. I’d hire a cast and a director. They were a lot of work, but I had a taste for production.”
Bad is good
During the pandemic, the writing school Brody had started as a sideline took off in a big way. It was so successful, she said, her husband eventually quit his job in finance to work full time running their home business, Writing Mastery Academy.
“Suddenly everyone was stuck at home wanting to learn new skills,” she said. “For a lot of people, being a writer is a dream. Our whole mission is to help people achieve that dream.”
While Writing Mastery Academy is a subscription service that gets members access to a wide variety of online courses, Brody doesn’t mind sharing the secrets of her writing success — which are not really secrets at all, she said.
First of all, write daily. Make it routine. Don’t struggle over it, she said. Just make the commitment and do it.
“Creating habits is what it’s all about,” Brody said. “I’ve created the habit that I write every morning without checking my phone, without checking the email, without any distractions.
“It’s not a question. It’s not a battle. It’s like brushing your teeth. It’s just something you do,” she said.
Crucial to maintaining that routine is letting go of the accursed inner critic that bedevils all writers.
“Not every day is amazing. Some days the writing is crap but I’ve done it,” Brody said. “Bad writing can be fixed. No writing cannot be fixed.”
First drafts are meant to be bad, she said, especially the confusing middle, which Brody calls the muddle.
“To write well, you have to write badly,” she said. “So many writers don’t finish things because they think it’s no good. To let yourself write badly is one of the most freeing gifts you can give yourself.”
