The Writing Exercise That Inspired My Novel Series (and Changed My Life)
A book changed my life—but it was writing one, not reading one. The first three novels I wrote were all YA, but they were about girls who were nothing like me as a teenager. Those characters were awesome and I loved them, but I had to write them based on reading about what other people’s experiences were. I’d felt wrong and out of place my whole life, and still did, well into my 40s. But writing those books gave me confidence. As I wrote them, the sense that I really had things to say about my own experiences with gender and being an outsider began to build up and bubbled over.
It would be a thought experiment—I’d write my story as if it was happening today rather than in the 80s and 90s. I dove in on November 1, as I started my fourth round with NaNoWriMo. The starting point would be just before my best and only friend moved during my sophomore year.
Fifteen-year-old Nic just wanted to be left alone, but the bullying and ostracism were incessant, her brother was being a jerk, and now her best friend was moving—it was just endless. I started writing the mockery, the misunderstood social interactions, the focus on her art. In my head I was reliving it all. When Nic agreed to an ill-advised makeover, I was there with her, experiencing the horror of being paraded around in front of people who told her she actually looked okay with makeup, while all she wanted to do was scrape it off.
During my teen years, I didn’t know what to do about my discomfort and confusion. But Nic had Google at her fingertips. Her exploration of gender became mine and I learned with her. She discovered that gender wasn’t binary and the existence of the term gender nonconforming. We both latched onto those two words—Nic because she knew doing anything as extreme as changing her pronouns would only invite more bullying, and me because I felt too old for changing pronouns, like I’d already missed my chance.
I emerged from the depths of my teenage years on November 28, with over 80,000 words making up a complete draft of a story that I knew was the beginning of something good. The title was obvious—Ugly. The manuscript was unquestionably a hot mess, but it had a strength that surprised me. I was invigorated. Not long after, I checked the gender nonconforming box when I filled out my MFA applications. But most importantly, I knew that Nic’s story wasn’t over. Even though I first needed to clean up Ugly, I couldn’t wait to tell the rest of her story because I wanted to see who she would become—so I could know who I could have become, and if I might be able to use some of Nic’s vision now.
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I started on the next book, Uglier, in early 2022, a few months before releasing Ugly. This sequel was entirely fiction. I took Nic out of her small, conservative town, and plonked her down at a public boarding school in a suburb of Oklahoma City. I had only a vague idea of the plot. All I knew was that a boy would show up and break Nic’s heart. Mack, the love interest, showed up at the dorm orientation. Then Jenna, another major character, showed up at the campus tour, completely unplanned. And Jacob, Nic’s equally shy tablemate in art class, was also unplanned but crucial to the story. As I wrote the story, the characters grew and I fell in love with all of them. I was right there with Nic, having all these amazing social experiences, almost ruining everything with a few stupid words, recovering from heartbreak, and finally, finally coming out as agender—all while having the best group of friends. I loved this book when I finished it. The book was supposed to cover Nic’s entire junior year, but I only made it to December, and it was obviously too long, but I couldn’t figure out what to cut because it all seemed so important. It was like it was a part of me.
I was still working on Uglier edits when Ugly was named an Honor book in the SCBWI SPARK Award for older readers. That validation—other people had found Nic compelling and authentic—gave me a boost of courage to come out as agender myself. I finished and released Uglier and got to work on the third book, Ugliest. I knew the characters were going to become activists for LGBTQ+ rights in the face of all the anti-LGBTQ+ legislation that’s currently a plague upon red states in the US. But I was struggling with how to give it a positive ending. A friend reminded me of the teen activists in Florida fighting against the Don’t Say Gay bill and for gun control. And I had it. The story poured out of me and I don’t think I’ve ever felt so empowered as I did watching Nic and their friends fight against hate and inspire real change.
I absolutely believed it. Nic had done it, and I could have done it if I was a teen today. I knew this had to be the end of the story. I’d originally planned to write Nic’s senior year and first year of college, but the core of the series is done with Ugliest. The series covered two years in the life of a teen who went from a painfully shy and confused “girl” just wanting to be left alone to a confident agender activist fighting against one of America’s darkest modern movements.
And I was forever changed.
Check out Kelly Vincent’s Ugliest here:
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