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Ohhh chicas, this is a li’l bit exciting, Dyan Sheldon author-girl of Confession of a Teenage Drama Queen and new book My Worst Best Friend has come to play in our world o’ pink - hurrah!


Did you or do you have a worst best friend?
Doesn’t everyone? My worst best friend that I can remember in middle school was named Nancy. She stabbed me with a pin that looked like a sword. And wrote me a poison pen letter telling me how awful I was (at least, that’s what I think it said – mercifully, all details have faded in the mists of time). Up until then she had been one of my best friends. I’m not sure what it was all about, but I suspect I’d really annoyed her in some way (I don’t believe I was trying to annoy her, I wasn’t a particularly vindictive child. Indeed, if I’m remembering correctly, it was Nancy who urged me to shut my little sister in the attic that time.) Interestingly enough, though I have no memory of ever speaking to Nancy after the stabbing/poison pen incident and would swear that we never even said hello when we passed each other in the hall in high school, I recently discovered that she’d signed my yearbook and described me as ‘a good friend’. It’s all very baffling. But my very very worst best friend occurred much later in life.

Do you see more of Gracie or Savanna in yourself?
Oh, definitely I’m more Gracie. I wasn’t short or really into lizards then, but I was shy – so shy I’d make Gracie look madly extrovert. But probably even Savanna wouldn’t admit to seeing more of herself in Savanna (though she might, of course, for people like Savanna it’s pretty much a one-person play).

How much do you draw on your own teen experience in your writing?
It’s really difficult to answer that question. When I say I was shy I mean I was pathologically shy – and very much not part of the high school scene. I remember several years ago coming upon my famous yearbook and looking at the pictures of all these people and the in-jokes about them and what they did and were going to do and thinking, who are these people? They lived in a world I simply didn’t inhabit. I was on the sidelines. I guess I must have been watching but I wasn’t out there in the thick of it. Most of the time I was home, arguing with my mother or locked in my room reading a book.

Were you confident when it came to boys and dating at school?
The answer to that is: Not Applicable. No boy in my high school would have gone out with me on a dare. Though I did have friends who were boys, oddly enough. Some very good ones. But I was not dateable. I don’t know if it’s changed, but in high school there were a handful of girls who were generally sought after (and, interestingly, when you look back at pictures of them, most of them weren’t’ particularly pretty, and they probably weren’t unusually lovely or nice, either), and then there was everybody else.

What was your favourite book as a teenager?
Possibly I could get into The GUINNESS BOOK OF RECORDS with this, but I read the entire Lanny Budd series by Upton Sinclair when I was in high school. There were quite a few books in it, if I remember correctly. I shouldn’t think anyone else read them all, or that anyone nowadays has ever heard of them, but I thought they were great. And also I was a major P G Wodehouse fan.

If you weren’t an author what job would you do?
Rather late in the game, I’ve discovered that if someone had sat me down with a lump of clay when I was in school and said, ‘Go on, make something’ I might have chosen a completely different career. (Although it’s equally likely that, covered in clay and waist deep in bunny plates, I would have one day looked up and thought: I have to write some books! Why didn’t I think of this before?)

Who would play you in a film about your life?
Lisa Simpson.

Your book Confessions of a Teenage Drama Queen has been made into a film. How much input did you have on what was cut/how true it was to the book?
I had absolutely nothing to do with the film. They did let me see the script, but not in what you’d call an advisory capacity, as a courtesy. They did change quite a bit and add things that would never have occurred to me, which I expected, but they also kept quite a bit and used a lot of my dialogue, so I didn’t have to crawl out of the screening before the credits came up.

Is there anything that was cut that you wish had made the film?
There was one scene in the book that I thought was fairly hilarious that was completely axed, and though I sort of think I understand why they dumped it I would have kept it myself.

What tips do you have for an aspiring teen writer?
In my experience, there are two ways you learn to write. The first is by reading everything and anything. It’s like an apprenticeship, a chance to see how it’s done – see how the things you like are done and how the things you don’t like are done, as well. The second is by writing. I’ve taught workshops where, week after week, only one person ever brought anything in to share with the class. Everybody else, although they REALLY wanted to write, oh did they want to write, just couldn’t find the time. They were busy. They had other things to do. If you really want to write, you don’t have something else to do. Indeed, I remember hearing Bruce Springsteen (who is a rather wonderful writer himself) being interviewed once, and Bruce saying that his sister was a talented writer and could have done something with it but when she was in high school she was really popular and had a lot of friends and a big social life, so she never did do anything with it. And so it goes…

For more Dyan goodness go to: www.dyansheldon.co.uk