All Our Yesterdays (39 page)

A huge reason this book exists at all is because of the hand-holding, cheerleading, and shoulder-lending of my incredible friends and critique partners. Sara McClung is a trooper who has read this book as many times as I have, maybe more, and her insight and support was invaluable to me in writing it. Tanya Byrne was the first person who ever made me think I could actually be a writer, and her conviction never wavered, even when mine was nonexistent. Cambria Dillon and Copil Yanez were much-needed fresh eyes and endless sources of enthusiasm. And I feel confident that the D.C. MafYA is not only the best group of writers in the world but also the best people to blow off writing to go sing karaoke with. Their friendship and support has meant the world to me.

The biggest thanks goes to my family, who had more confidence in me than I ever did and who have always made me feel loved and safe in this world: my sister Annie, who is one of my first and most trusted readers; my sister Ava, who carried a copy of my truly terrible first novel in her backpack to school for weeks; my wonderful dad Ezra and stepmother Amrita; and especially my mom Lynn. I never would have written this book without her and her inability to just let me have a hobby when she thought I could be doing more. I love you guys.

And, last but not least, thank
you
.

Meet Cristin Terrill

Cristin Terrill has a Bachelor of Arts in Drama from Vassar College and  a Master of Arts in Shakespeare Studies from The Shakespeare Institute in Stratford-upon-Avon. She currently lives outside of Washington, D.C. and teaches creative writing to children and teens.

Describe
All Our Yesterdays
in five words.

Teens time travel, chaos ensues!

What is your favourite bit of
All Our Yesterdays
, and why?

Em’s obsession with the drain at the very beginning was the thing that made me want to write this story, and it came to me so much more easily than anything I’ve ever written.

I check the spoon again, and this time the sanded edge fits perfectly into the groove of the screw. I jam it in and feel the temperature of my blood rise. A dull little voice in the back of my mind asks me why I care so much about this stupid drain, but I barely hear it over the pounding in my head, like a drummer leading soldiers to war. I begin to turn the spoon, but the screw doesn’t budge, held in place by years of dirt and rust and God knows what else. I turn harder, trying to force it to move, until the plastic creaks and threatens to snap.

“Come on, damn it!”

I pinch the spoon at the very base, as close to the screw as my fingers can manage, and turn. With a squeal, the screw begins to move. I laugh, little huffs of air that feel foreign but wonderful on my lips. When that screw gives way, I attack the next and the next, scrabbling at them with my fingernails until they bleed when the spoon doesn’t work fast enough, and finally yanking at the grating when only a few threads of the last screw are holding it in place.

It pops off in my hand, suddenly nothing more than a thin piece of metal, and I drop it with a clang.

All Our Yesterdays
shows that the line between good and evil is not easily defined. Is this something that you feel society should question more?

I thought the question of whether it’s okay to hurt one person for the good of the many was an interesting one to explore, but I didn’t have a specific stance I was trying to get across. The truth is, I’m not at all sure what I would do in Em’s shoes, or even in the future James’s.

What do you hope readers will take away from reading
All Our Yesterdays
?

Mostly I just hope they’ll be entertained! If they consider going easier on themselves and loving themselves a little more, then that’s a bonus.

Which three people from the past would you like to go back in time to meet, and why?

William Shakespeare. I have a Masters in Shakespeare Studies, but there’s still very little we know about the man himself. I’d want to see what he was like and ask him about how he wrote his plays and what he was trying to say with them. (I’m also dying to know if that line from
Hamlet
was supposed to be “too too solid” or “too too sullied”.)

As for the other two, it’s hard to decide! I’ve loved Elizabeth I since I was a little girl; she was such a fascinating and complex woman. I’m also a big science geek, so it would be difficult to pass up the chance to meet Albert Einstein. Mark Twain or Oscar Wilde would probably be a ton of fun to hang out with, and who wouldn’t want to find out what such an influential figure as Jesus was really like? I can’t choose!

Do you see yourself, or anyone you know, in any of your characters?

There are bits of me in all of them, which I think is pretty much inevitable for any author. They have some of my rhetorical ticks—according to friends and family, Finn sounds like me sometimes—and the relationship between Em and Marina is similar to the way I think about my younger self.

I’ve never used someone I know personally as inspiration for a character. That just seems like a recipe for trouble to me! More often, I draw from other characters I find compelling and use them as inspiration. For instance, Em’s got a little bit of Sarah Connor from
The Terminator
franchise in her, while Finn has a touch of Logan Echolls from
Veronica Mars
.

If you could go back in time and change one thing about your past, what would it be?

I would want to be braver.

If there was a film of
All Our Yesterdays
, who could you see playing the central characters?

This is a tough question. I worked in the theatre for many years and in casting specifically for some of that time, so I have a lot of respect and affection for actors. I feel like dream casts are often based primarily on who
looks
the part, but I’m much more interested in what an actor brings to a role that I never saw there myself, and the person who brings a character to life the most is often not who you’d expect (like Jennifer Lawrence as Katniss Everdeen in
The Hunger Games
movie, which is a piece of casting that was initially surprising but turned out beautifully). So to give a total non-answer answer, I would want whichever actors brought the most life and authenticity to the characters, regardless of any other factors like appearance, name recognition or experience.

As a teenager, what did you like to read?

As a teen, I mostly read heavy classics (think
Les Misérables
, unabridged) for fun. This is probably because YA barely existed at the time. Many of my favourite books were still the ones I’d read as a child and continued to re-read in secret, like
The Westing Game
or
The Giver
. I was also the nerd in English class who actually
liked
a lot of the books we were assigned, such as
A Separate Peace
,
Rebecca
and
A Tale of Two Cities
.

What book do you wish you had written?

So many! I wish I could write with the poetry of Markus Zusak or Laini Taylor, the wit of John Green or E. Lockhart, or the plotting prowess of Suzanne Collins. The most recent thing I’ve read that I would kill to have written was Maggie Stiefvater’s
The Raven Boys
, mostly because of how beautifully drawn and authentic those characters are. But my favourite books of all time (at least so far) are the
His Dark Materials
trilogy by Philip Pullman, so I’ll say those.

Who or what was your biggest influence in deciding to become a writer?

Becoming a writer was a bit of a fluke for me, and it’s all down to my mom. I’d written short stories and fan fiction as a hobby since middle school, but my mom—who’s always suggesting alternative careers for me—was on my case about writing a novel. I thought that was ridiculous, but one year I decided I would write a novel just for her as a Christmas present. I started in the spring and barely had time to get the book printed so as to give it to her for Christmas. In the process of writing that book, I got sort of addicted, and here we are!

Do you have a writing ritual?

Not an interesting one, I’m afraid! I prefer to write at the library because I find too many ways to procrastinate at home, and I usually listen to white noise because I can’t concentrate with music. Basically, all my rituals are about removing any possible distraction.

Can you give us a hint about what we can expect in your next book?

More Marina, James and Finn! The future didn’t turn out quite the way they’d planned.

Dying to know about Cristin’s inspiration for
All Our Yesterdays
?

Read on . . .

Dear 2011 Cristin,

You’re about to start writing a new book. I know this because I’ve already written it. Congratulations, you finished it! And despite your best attempts to do everything wrong at least once, it actually turned out okay in the end!

But because I love you and want you to have an easier time of it than I did, I’m going to give you a few tips that will save you a lot of hair pulling:

1. Watch
Terminator II
when it’s showing on TV one night and imagine what the story would be like if the killer robot was the good guy—and a teenage girl instead of a robot. This will get you started.

2. Although your two point-of-view characters are actually the same person, give them two different names. Otherwise you will confuse even yourself. When people ask why, make up some deep-sounding answer about how hardship strips Marina down to her essentials, making her shed her illusions, her hair and her name until she’s just Em. Really, it was just a lot less confusing that way and I know you’re going to get excited at the prospect that readers won’t know for sure if Em and Marina are the same person until the scene in the hospital parking lot.

3. Don’t worry so much about making Marina likable in the beginning. She’s a rich bitch with a heart of gold; embrace that. Once you do, she’ll come to life for you.

4. Your first draft of the book is going to be pretty boring. It’s okay, you’ll fix it. For one thing, you should add these things called “flashes” where Em and Finn pass out and relive something from their past. It will allow you to show a lot of things that happened to them during those lost middle years and to flesh out their relationship. Once you’ve done this, you won’t be able to
imagine
how you first wrote the book without them. In fact, those flashes will be so integral to the story that you’ll completely forget they were a later addition until someone asks you about it directly.

5. You know that theory you have about how on TV shows the intended love interest’s best friend/brother always ends up being a better, more interesting love interest for the heroine? But you don’t think there’s a way to make that work in a book? Give it a try anyway, you never know.

6. Just ask your agent about guns and law enforcement. It’s going to save you a ton of research time. Then bake her some cookies to thank her for knowing so much.

7. I know you sometimes look at pictures of your teenage self and wish you could just hug her and tell her that she’s not the total loser she thinks she is. I bet you can find a way to use that.