1. {Selcouth questions} Were you always an avid reader or writer?
{Olivia answers} Yeah, I guess I was. Even before I could actually read, I would pick up books and make stories to go along with the pictures. As a kid, my bed would have so many books stacked on the end of it, and they'd all fall off when I inevitably kicked them in the middle of the night, so my parents would always have to warn babysitters for the crashing sounds they would hear when all the books finally hit the floor.
Eventually, I did learn to read (as most people tend to do these days), and fell in love with all things books, but it wasn't until first grade that I started really writing. I had this amazing teacher who forced us to write in a journal every day, sometimes under a prompt, sometimes freely. I hated it at first, and would cry to my parents about how boring it was, but at some point, after writing what felt like millions of pages in that journal, I began to like it. And that's when I sort of decided that I liked writing.
2. {Selcouth questions} How did you get the idea for your book?
{Olivia answers} I got the idea for Songs for Watching the Stars By when I was listening to Spotify one evening, as one does, and I thought I can't remember which song it was, some song came on that made me think, this would be really good to listen to while watching the stars. And then I started wondering what other songs would be good to listen to while watching the stars, and then I started to make a playlist of them.
But before that playlist was finished, I got the idea for a book (mostly because I thought Songs for Watching the Stars By) would be a cool title. And from that I formed the idea of a character who was obsessed with music. And then I got the idea of everyone in the world having a song that perfectly defined them, and somehow it all turned into the short story posted on my account right now.
3. {Selcouth questions} Is the theme or protagonist of your book, related to you or your life?
{Olivia answers} Well, everything I write has a piece of me. I think it'd be pretty impossible to write a character or scene that I didn't have some part in. For example, Cole's desperation to get away from his life and his spontaneity to follow a stranger to a concert are things that are part of me too.
But Riya, her passion for music and the way she strives to make every day different are also things that came from me. Like I said, everything I write has a piece of me. Someday I may need to learn to write without putting myself into it, but for now, that's the best way I can think of to make my characters human and real.
4. {Selcouth questions} Who inspires you to write?
{Olivia answers} I don't think there's a person, per se, that inspires to me to write. The world inspires me to write. Watching the leaves falling in autumn, and snow in the winter, and children playing in a park, or cars passing by on the street in front of my house, it's all inspiration. Everything is inspiration, if you want it to be. Most of my ideas come from random things like a song or a crack in the sidewalk. Weird, I know, but it makes you feel like there are an infinite amount of things to write about, since there's so much inspiration, just waiting to be utilized, all over the place.
5. {Selcouth questions}In the near future, do you have plans to take your writing, to a new level?
{Olivia answers} Well, my first plan is to finish my novel, H2O,(only a chapter or two to go). After that, I'm probably going to go through and edit the whole thing, mostly to make sure that the facts are consistent, even though I've tried to check throughout the writing process, and to catch any typos or awkward sentences. Then, when all that's done, I want to try to get it featured and maybe in the future, published. But that's sort of just a dream of mine.
