Matt Mendez: Embrace Your Own Writing Style
Matt Mendez is the author of Barely Missing Everything, his debut novel, and the short story collection Twitching Heart. Like many of his characters, Matt grew up in El Paso, Texas, and continues to love and live in the Southwest, now in Tucson, Arizona.
He is a military veteran and earned his MFA from the University of Arizona where has taught creative writing. Matt is the father of two daughters that he loves fiercely. Follow him on Twitter and Instagram.
Matt Mendez (Photo credit: Chris Summitt)
In this post, Matt discusses not overthinking the writing process and trusting your own style, how publishing teams help writers and books, and more.
Name: Matt Mendez
Literary agent: Dara Hyde, Hill Nadel Literary Agency
Book title: The Broke Hearts
Publisher: Atheneum/Caitlyn Dlouhy Book—Simon & Schuster
Release date: October 3, 2023
Genre/category: Contemporary Fiction, Young Adult
Previous titles: Barely Missing Everything
Elevator pitch for the book: The Broke Hearts is about fathers and sons. Friends and growing up. Art. How life can be sometimes be like a Lotería card. El Valiente. El Mundo. El Corazón.
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What prompted you to write this book?
The Broke Hearts is a companion book to my first novel, Barely Missing Everything. I started writing it in 2019, but the story didn’t take shape until 2020.
During the panic and turmoil of the pandemic—as well as in my own life—the sense of grief and confusion that the characters from Barely Missing Everything were feeling by the end of the novel became uniquely clear. The Broke Hearts became a book about the different ways we all live with broken hearts. How we continue to love imperfectly. Heal imperfectly.
How long did it take to go from idea to publication? And did the idea change during the process?
Four years.
And yes!
My first novel, Barely Missing Everything, has multiple main characters and point-of-views. There are sections written in a series of letters and one chapter is told from the POV of a Math Quiz. The entire idea to publication process took 10 years—so I promised myself I wouldn’t do that again.
My goal with The Broke Hearts was to write a single POV novel, to keep to a straightforward timeline and single narrative and that absolutely did not happen. Not even a little.
Were there any surprises or learning moments in the publishing process for this title?
I can’t imagine The Broke Hearts without the insights of Caitlyn Dlouhy, my genius editor. And I’m in love with the cover, designed by Michael McCartney and that coyote drawn by Daniel Egneus. Marco Finnegan drew the most wonderful art that is inside the book; his work does some magic to the story. And I would not have even discovered Marco without my intrepid agent Dara Hyde.
And of course there are the wonderful copy editors, who caught every single misspelled word and typo and inconsistency. It’s not that I’m surprised or didn’t know about all the work that goes into publishing a book already, but there are so many people who work on books that make them great that go well beyond me or any other writer.
Were there any surprises in the writing process for this book?
I shouldn’t say I was surprised that I didn’t stick to my promise of keeping The Broke Hearts a single POV, straightforward story, but I was shocked by how much literary mischief I was able to get myself into while writing this book.
I have two main characters, JD and Danny, best friends, and recent high school graduates, but the two boys are in really different places in their lives. Danny off to college—JD into the military.
So, of course I went with two POVs. I also write an entire section of vignettes, telling the story of Danny’s father—the Sarge—as a young boy. Did I mention there is a complete short film screenplay inside, too?
What do you hope readers will get out of your book?
I want readers to love reading The Broke Hearts as much as I loved writing it. The characters are funny and complicated, the inventiveness of the book and the art inside helps tell the story of fathers and sons, about friendship and growing up in a what I think is a unique and powerful way.
Ultimately my hope was to write a novel that would remain with a reader long after they finished reading it.
If you could share one piece of advice with other writers, what would it be?
To not overthink your writing process and embrace your own style. I wasted some time while writing The Broke Hearts trying to write a more straightforward kind of book, one that would be a little easier to talk about and what I thought would be more marketable—no one told me that a single narrative book would be more marketable or to write one. I made this up all on my own.
I have a unique style and voice, and I was trying to change it for reasons that had nothing to do with growing as a writer or creativity. Instead, I was trying to write something I thought would be more popular with a general—imaginary—audience, which has everything to do with my own self-doubt.
Of course, it didn’t take too long while drafting before the urge to try all sorts of different things won out. In the end I trusted my instincts enough to lean into all the different elements and character voices. And because of that I’ve written a novel I now think is the best I’ve done so far.