In seventh grade, New York Times best-selling author Rick Yancey was told to write a five page story. Instead, he turned in a 25 page composition.
“I was a little nervous because my teacher was really mean,” Yancey said. “I thought he would give me a bad grade because it was too long.”
Yancey wrote a note at the top apologizing for his paper’s length, but his teacher’s response has stuck with him to this day: “Never apologize for something you should be proud of.”
Despite showing interest in writing at a young age, Yancey tried out law school before embarking on a career with the IRS. It wasn’t until the late 1990s, after he and his family relocated to Knoxville, that he rekindled his first passion.
Yancey’s son, Jake, an incoming freshman in film studies, recalled his father’s career shift.
“I remember when he was still writing while working at the IRS, so I can still see him working in that environment,” Jake said. “But I can’t imagine him actually doing that now, because he’s my dad and he’s a writer.”
Since his transition, Yancey has published 15 novels encompassing mystery, science fiction, fantasy and adult drama.
“I’m eclectic as a writer as much as I’m eclectic as a reader,” he said. “I’m revisiting as a writer all those things that excited me when I was younger as a reader.”
The vicarious experience of living through the main character is the primary reason Yancey reads.
“It’s not as if every character in my stories is a version of me, but it’s certainly true that the more connected you feel with a character emotionally and with their story, the better a writer you’re going to be,” Yancey said.
His description of bringing a novel to completion shows another motive behind his writing.
“As a writer you have this ideal,” he said. “Inside of you, you know how good that story could be or how good the ending might be if you could just pull it off. You never hit it 100 percent, but sometimes you get really, really close.”
Jake recalls his father during this process of literary incarnation.
“Some days he is outside for hours and hours,” Jake said. “He’ll only come inside to get coffee, and we will have tiny conversations where I’ll ask, ‘How’s the writing?’ And he’ll say if he’s brilliant that day or if he sucks that day. Whatever he thinks.”
Yancey’s intensity reveals itself in his own summation of writing.
“So much of writing is a leap into the void,” he said. “Don’t get bogged down in anything else except telling the best story you possibly can.”
His latest endeavor, the 5th Wave Series, is a trilogy that has drawn comparisons to The Hunger Games and other similarly dystopian novels. However, Yancey believes his works have a distinct difference.
“I consider it more post-apocalyptic,” he explained. “It’s basically the story of a world-shattering event, the arrival of extraterrestrial life, and there is no dysfunctional society like there is in a dystopian novel. There is just no society.”
The novels follow a science-fiction survival plot with the central question being, how does one survive an attack from a being who is light-years more advanced than you?
The first book of the series is set to hit the big screen as a major motion picture starring Chloe Grace Moretz next year, and Yancey is pleased with Columbia Pictures’ commitment to authenticity.
“They were very concerned with being authentic to the book, being true to the book, and to do that they thought it would be worthwhile to invite me to the set,” he said. “There was nothing off limits.”
As a young adult fiction author, Yancey voiced his hope for the careers of aspiring writers.
“If it’s in them, it’s going to come out,” Yancey said. “They can pretend and can go to engineering school, but at the end of the day they are an artist and it’s going to happen.”
Despite believing the creative bug is hardwired into a person, he sees no problem in taking your time to get there.
“The content has to come from somewhere,” Yancey said. “It doesn’t hurt to live a little bit of life before you sit down to write.”
