The Guitar

is guitar girl(book) by sarra manning based on a true story?

if so, the band in her book is called “the hormones”, what is the real bands name? know any songs by them? thanks

Sarra Manning spent five years working on the now sadly defunct J17, first as a writer and then as entertainment editor. She joined the team of teen fashion bible Ellegirl, which she later went on to edit and has consulted on a wide range of youth titles. Sarra is now acting editor of What To Wear magazine, as well as writing the Shop Bitch column for Time Out. She’s also been a regular contributor to ELLE, The Guardian, ES Magazine, Seventeen, Details and Heat. Her fifth title for Hodder’s Bite list is Pretty Things, with a sixth book, Lost, to follow.

Kerry from Ash: How do you get inspiration for your books?

Sarra Manning : I suppose it’s everything. The story ideas take a while to percolate. With Guitar Girl, I imagine what the story would be like when I was sixteen so I have carried that story with me for about fifteen years. Watching The OC, listening to girls gossiping about boys with their mates on the bus – that’s always a rich source of information!

Daydreamdreamer: I love Guitar Girl. Did you have to go to a lot of gigs and things for research?

Sarra Manning : Whenever I’m writing I always have a selection of songs that really relates to the character and that’s a really good way to get into their heads to find out who they are. I used to be a music journalist for a magazine called Melody Maker. I spent three years going to a gig every night so that was really helpful when I was writing.

Daydreamdreamer: Are your characters based upon real people or pure fiction?

Sarra Manning : I would say sort of a mixture of me, my friends, characters from films, TV shows and some of it is just completely made up. I always kind of have somebody in mind when I am writing of who the character resembles.

Alice from Cambridgeshire: What age did you start writing?

Sarra Manning : I started writing at a young age like seven or eight. I would always have a story on the go. I used to have a really sad newsletter thing I used to make every week. My mum used to have a photocopy shop and I used to make these little magazines and sell them at gigs I went to.

Seb from Bath: Hi, when did you write your first book and how long did it take to write?

Sarra Manning : Guitar Girl was my first proper book and it probably took about six months. I used to work full time and would write in the evenings and weekends. The story was so planned out in my head that when it actually came to write it, it was like writing on autopilot because I have planned it for years.

Toni from Belfast: Could you tell me how to write a novel and how to make it interesting for people to read?

Sarra Manning : When I know, I’ll get back to you! I think that you need to write something you want to read. When I was a teenager I didn’t like to read teen fiction because I thought it was really boring as it said nothing about my life. So when I wrote my books, I wrote about things I liked as a teenager and what I like now. It’s also about creating characters that are real, thinking about what they look like, what kind of clothes they wear, what they do on a Saturday night and hopefully that creates characters people can translate to and will like.

Yvie from London: Hi, I was just thinking about my future plans as you do and just wanted to know what path you went down to get into journalism? Thanks.

Sarra Manning : I left school when I was sixteen and did my A-levels at college and actually did journalism as an A-level course. I learned how to interview, I learned about newspapers and magazines. Then I went to the University of Sussex and did an English with Media Studies degree. It wasn’t very vocational. When I came back from university, I started writing to this guy who worked on Melody Maker and he really liked my writing and he showed my letter to the reviews editor and that’s how I started being a freelance writer. But I also wrote to anybody and I would write and not get paid for it until I went for a job on J17. I started writing for them and found something I was good at and loved passionately. When I started loving what I was doing, that was when I started to become a really good writer.

Shell from Wellingborough: What is it like to be a writer?

Sarra Manning : Mostly it involves sitting at home in my pyjamas, staring at my computer screen, surfing the internet, playing computer games, and when it gets to seven o’clock at night and I realise I haven’t written a word and then I would sort of managed to write 3000 words in under 2 hours because I am in a complete panic!

Daydreamdreamer: How old were you when Guitar Gi

Prologue (about me)

Guitar Girl $1.00 Sex, drugs, and rock & roll… a common high-school fantasy, right? In British author Sarra Manning’s debut novel Guitar Girl, this oft-trumpeted triple-temptation proves to be terribly trying for a budding pop star. Molly Montgomery and her friends Tara and Jane live largely unnoticed until they form a fledgling girl band that will “be part of the new girl revolution.” Fragile-yet-feist…

Guitar Girl $2.36 …

Guitar Girl …