Isabella on the start of FITS
One of the question we most often get it how we met -- or rather, how we started writing a book together. After all, I'm from Colorado and he's from New York. Thus, I present to you the magic of the internet.
I hesitantly responded to a sort of ad Mitchell posted on a writing site Figment —I almost didn’t, because I didn’t think I could get the job. Sixteen and with little faith in my writing, I decided to take the chance and emailed him--lo and behold, he replied. I had to answer some questions and send him excerpts of my writing. It was all very nerve-wracking, let me tell you. I’d never done anything like this, and he was some writing god who had managed to write and publish two books and be fairly successful—and was only a year older than me (at the time, I'd sold about twenty books total. To my family.)
But as the night passed on, I started to realize I might actually have a shot. And then he said it—“if you want it, you can have the job.” And I sat back, and thought long and hard about what this could mean for me and my writing career, and if I was ready to make that dedication. Finally, I decided to take that step and I said yes.
It was all very formal at first. You could tell that, for the first few days, we were testing the waters, getting to know each other. Soon enough, however, we were like two writing peas in a pod. It was a little weird—I’d known this guy, who lived on a completely different side of the country, for only about a month—and yet I was talking to him like I’d known him for years. Even in our writing, things started syncing up without us planning, weird coincidences. ‘Great minds think alike,’ I often said. It’s this chemistry that I think will make our novel, Fire in the Stars, a truly amazing and unique novel.
It’s crazy to think that I almost didn’t respond because I was scared of rejection. The real lesson learned here: Take chances, don’t underestimate yourself. It might change your life.
