BREAKINGIN

Debut authors: How they did it, what they learned, and why you can do it, too.

- MORIAH RICHARD

Rhonda DeChambeau

Top Heavy

(YA verse novel, June, Holiday House)

“After landing a spot on a competitive dance team, a top-heavy dancer dreams of breast reduction surgery amidst her family's growing financial problems, a deteriorating friendship, and a first-love romance.”

WRITES FROM: Massachusetts. PRE-HEAVY: I applied and was selected as the 2022–2023 Associates of the Boston Public Library Writer-in-Residence with the first 20 pages of Top Heavy. This amazing program provides a generous stipend and an office at the Boston Public Library for an unpublished writer for children or young adults. TIME FRAME: When I was selected for the Writer-in-Residence program, I had about 25 pages of Top Heavy drafted. I also had a sense of where the story was headed. I threw myself into the writing, determined to make my year-long residency count. After about three months, I had a completed draft. ENTER THE AGENT: My agent, Elizabeth Bennett from Transatlantic Agency, reached out to me after I'd won the Writer-in-Residence fellowship. She'd read the description of Top Heavy and was interested from the start. I sent her my beginning pages, as well as some pages from other projects. BIGGEST SURPRISE: I'm still amazed at what a tremendous amount of work goes into the final product and how many people are involved in making it become a reality! WHAT I DID RIGHT:Top Heavy is the fifth novel I've written, including some really early, really awful novels. Some of the more recent projects have potential, and there's a chance I'll go back to them. But I believe that you have to keep writing new projects, pursuing new ideas, and trying new things.