No Heroes arose from a nightmare. I dreamt of a man coming to my school with a gun. And he began shooting. Over and over again. I couldn’t help but think about it for weeks, and I didn’t even come close to forgetting it. I had to think about all the people who had actually had to experience a shooting, and I had to think about how one would feel afterwards.
So I began to write during a school trip. In the beginning I didn’t know what I actually wanted to write, I didn’t know my own story. Miriam and her classmates just came to me, and then I knew what story I wanted to tell.
For many months I wrote about a girl that lost everything that mattered to her at a school shooting. A girl that didn’t know how she could even go on with her life. But she kept going. Because she had to. And Miriam learned that after all the bad, good would follow.
That is the essence of No Heroes. It is not about the shooting itself. It is about the aftermath. It is about the question of how to go on with life, even if you think that you are not even capable of breathing anymore. How does one go on with their life, if there is nothing worth living for; if, to you, there is no more beauty in the world? How does one get up in the morning, if you only yearn the end? Those are precisely the questions Miriam has to deal with after the shooting.
Every child has a dream. A distant look towards the future, towards coming of age, a path it wants to take. I wanted to become a writer. I knew it the moment I read Cornelia Funke’s Inkheart and it transported me into another world that was both reality and fantasy. Because the words made this world become more and more real. I wanted to be able to do the same with my words.
So I wrote. There was no better feeling to me than to be able to – through my writing – bring characters to life and make ideas become a story. It is a part of me, just like my heart or my laughter. For my family and friends it was a matter of course. But I wanted to achieve more than that. Just once I wanted to be able to see one of my stories in a shop window.
After I finished writing No Heroes I put the manuscript into the drawer of my desk. And there it stayed. I really wanted to send it to publishers, but did not actually know how to start the whole thing. In the end it was Miss Schwind, who ran our local bookshop, who encouraged me. She looked up the publishers’ addresses for me and then we began sending out my manuscript.
After that I waited. And waited. For a long time I received a lot of rejections. That was really hard for me in the beginning. It made me feel as if I was not good enough. I tried to put up with the fact that No Heroes was just not good enough. But after one and a half years I finally got good news from Oetinger Verlag, my German publisher.
It felt like celebrating my birthday and Christmas at the same time, whilst winning the lottery and seeing all problems in this world disappear. For a small moment it felt exactly like that. It was so surreal, so far away, I could not process it. To be honest, I cannot believe it up until this day.
After not having researched anything throughout the writing process, I sat down with my editor to do just that. We spoke to the police and a psychiatrist. We changed a few things about how Miriam’s therapy would actually proceed, but generally speaking the story stayed what it was.
I counted the days and months, until my novel would finally be ready for sale in all the bookshops. Honestly, I was so afraid. Afraid that no one would want to read my book and that even if someone actually bought it, they would hate it. Since I have a blooming imagination, I would picture it in every single detail. If you are this close to seeing your biggest dream come true, there is so much more to lose.
When I read the first reaction to No Heroes on a blog, I couldn’t read the comment out of sheer nervousness. I needed my parents, who were as solid as a rock, to assure me that this reader was thrilled. And she really was.
The story of Miriam spread extremely fast through social media. Suddenly countless readers messaged me, thanking me for the confidence and hope in this book. That was the point where I was absolutely sure that I had to be dreaming.
Even today it seems so surreal and far away to me. For two years now you can buy my book in Germany, since last year in the Netherlands and Lithuania, and now also in Ireland!
Day after day I live a completely normal life; not much has changed for me. I still love reading as much as I did before. I spend time with my friends and relaxing evenings with my family. For some time now I have a job and I am going to begin my academic studies soon.
On these normal days I do not feel like a successful author, but like an average 20-year-old girl. When I do interviews or attend events, to meet my readers, I have to remind myself every single time, that this is now part of my life.
In theautumn of 2014 I won the Emerging Author Award from the German Academy of Youth Literature. You do not expect such things if you write a novel at 16 years old.
Sometimes I ask myself, how I deserve so much luck and success? But I try not to let this thought stop me. I just keep writing. At the moment I am writing a new book. And I still write just for myself like I did when I was younger, without working on a novel. I write down my thoughts, poems, I just write about life as I perceive it. And I let these stories become reality through my words.
[ No Heroes by Anna Seidl is published by Little IslandOpens in new window ]
