Sarah Dessen, a bestselling author with eleven published novels (among them the newly released “Keeping the Moon”) spoke to Edina High School students today on how and why she became a writer and how one can succeed in writing themselves.

Dessen started off with giving a brief review of her life and what brought her to writing. A relatable, witty and relatable speaker, Dessen had the crowd laughing instantly as she recounted how much she hated high school. “The only thing I had going for [me] was I had good friends, which saved me and I had books, which saved me,” said Dessen. She also noted the irony that all her books so far have been based in high school. “Maybe I’m still working out some issues from high school, or maybe my adult life has just been really boring,” commented Dessen jokingly, followed by laughter throughout the crowd.

Dessen also focused on her life long love of writing. “I wrote a bit in high school and I loved it, but I never thought that I would be a writer. I feel very lucky to do what I do, especially because when I was in high school I had no idea what I wanted to do, and this is a really cool job.”

Dessen then moved onto talking about her new book, “Saint Anything,” revealing that it actually stemmed from a failed book. “I have a tendency to write books that fail,” said Dessen. “For every book I write I have at least one book that fails. Writing is not easy for me, but it shouldn’t be so painful that it’s like being on a bad date everyday, so I put the book aside until I have the best idea and I’m ready.” Finally, Dessen said, the idea for the book came to her.

“I wanted to write about my high school life but it never felt real, which is weird because it is. Then I thought, about writing from a different perspective. Telling a story from the perspective of a sibling who has a brother getting convicted from drunk driving.” “Saint Anything” goes off that idea. The book is about a girl named Peyton whose charismatic but very reckless older brother is convicted for a DUI and jail sentence. From this unique perspective, Dessen writes about the effect her brother’s sentence has on her life and what she goes through as a result.

After talking about her new book, Dessen gave an exercise to students about characterization, giving insight into the writing process.  Dessen called on students to give details about a fictional character as they came up with it. After asking them several follow up questions, she helped them develop a multidimensional fictional character. “This is just an example of what you can do if you ask just a few inquiring questions,” said Dessen. “The name always comes first, and once the name comes I just add characteristics and what I want to write about, what I wanted to happen to me or what could have been.”

Next Dessen talked about the writing process as a whole, commenting that it is a long and difficult process for her “Writing a book is like being in a relationships to me. At the beginning its all brand new and its going well and you want to be with that book all the time. By the time I get to page 75 I start to notice a few things…. by the time I get to page 200 you see some many flaws and you really have to decide if you want to stick with them or not… and if you keep going and you make the right choice.. it’s like being at the top of a rollercoaster.. it’s the best feeling in the world.”

Another hard part of the writing process, Dessen admitted, is getting it back from the editors. “It’s like getting an essay back in english class,” said Dessen, “you’re so confident that your paper was perfect, then it comes back with comments and notes all over it and it’s the worst. It’s like, we love your book, but you need to change all this stuff.”

Overall students enjoyed the author visit, interested on her insight on the writing process. Hearing Dessen speak about her life as an author gave students interested in writing her unique perspective, and for fans of Dessen’s work, a chance to meet the author of so many of their favorite books.