The Bug Diary

Where I got the inspiration to write my newly released new adult genre book

When thinking about writing my first novel, I thought back to the books that made me want to be a writer in this first place — Harriet the Spy and The Long Secret by Louise Fitzhough, mostly. The writing is sharp and funny, and unlike any other young adult writing I’d encountered before or since. As a writer, it’s that thing where you shake your head and say, Damn, I wish I’d written that. As a girl, I didn’t know if I could ever write anything that good, but I wanted to someday, more than anything.

I identified strongly with the main character Harriet, a weird girl who wasn’t into traditionally “girly” things. Harriet was a snoop and she was loud and brash and could even be kind of a brat, but she was also refreshingly honest and real. Her childlike observations of the world were simultaneously beyond her years and hilarious in their brutality. Harriet’s desire to spy made her brave with an intensity that bordered on bonkers, which intrigued me to no end. She was also vulnerable. Though most people laud Harriet the Spy as Fitzhough’s greatest work, I identified even more with The Long Secret and all the strong female characters in that book — Harriet’s shy, mousy friend Beth Ellen who ends up being a badass; Beth Ellen’s poisonous, narcissistic mother who crashes back…