Student writes memoir about Rice

By Ellen Trinklein     11/8/12 6:00pm

All self-respecting, at least minimally talented, writers have, in rare moments of productiveness, promised themselves that they will write a novel. It is rare, sadly, for such well-intentioned thoughts to ever come to fruition. Rare, that is, unless you are Brown College junior Gabriela Sposito. 

In her memoir, titled The Best Part About Getting Lost, the psychology major, who expects to graduate this spring, writes about her transition from a sheltered life in Oklahoma to independence at Rice University.

"I've had this instinct, when something important happens to me, to write about it and about how it affects me," Sposito said. "That's just how I process things." 

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No surprise, then, that Sposito decided to write about it the biggest transitional moment of her life: freshman year of college.

"In this year, so many life-changing things I'd never done before had happened - a lot of really exciting, happy things and sad things, and [writing] was a way to work through it," Sposito said. 

In fact, it was the whirlwind transition from her life in Oklahoma to her life at Rice that inspired the writing of the book, Sposito said.

 "[The book] is about my freshman year and adapting to being a college student and the college life, but at the same time it's about moving away from home, getting independence and the experiences I had that helped shape that independence," Sposito said.

The book is centered around the fear that comes with making great change.

"I remembered thinking 'I don't know if [coming to Rice] was the right thing to do'," Sposito said.

Writing a novel is no small undertaking. The endeavor took a few years for Sposito to transition from crafting anecdotes and dialogues in her mind to penning them on paper. 

"I started summer after freshman year," Sposito said. "Even during freshman year, I had scenes and dialogues in my head that I'd been keeping track of, and in the summer, I started to pool it all together. It wasn't a fluid process."

Sposito said the writing process became a learning process in itself. She said she engaged in self-reflection as she discovered her own true reason for writing the book.

"A lot of times, I'd write a scene, come back later and have a different perspective on it," Sposito said. "It was halfway through writing that I came up with the real meaning of the book, which was not just telling stories, but about how I moved to a place that became home and not just a place I was going to study and live for a short amount of time."

Sposito said that although she did not originally plan to publish the book, once it was written she began to debate what to do next. After positive reviews from friends she thought she might go the traditional route of sending the manuscript to as many publishers as possible in the hope that at least one would accept. It was a chance encounter later on that altered her strategy. 

"One of my professors hosted a dinner with various professionals, and a man there had self-published his own book," Sposito said. "He explained to me how he went about it, so I looked at it and said, 'Okay, I'm gonna do this. I'm gonna do it.' And that was it." One month later, the book was published.

Sposito does not plan to stop writing any time soon. She said she already has the idea for her next book, most likely a novel. 

"I have an expo board in my room now with pages and ideas scattered all over it," she said. 

For now, though, Sposito wants to focus on graduating and sharing her book, which she believes applies to anyone going through a rough transition. 

"You can take something positive out of any experience, even if it is difficult," Sposito said. "If you're patient enough and stubborn enough to stick it out, anything can be a learning experience."

The Best Part About Getting Lost is available on Amazon for $13; however, students may buy the book for $8 if they email Sposito at grs2@rice.edu.

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