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Strength From Failure
Broken Pencils follows a turbulent teenager from Oakland who, on his eighteenth birthday, spirals into a night of reckless indulgence, searching for purpose and meaning in life. What was the inspiration for the setup of your story?
BROKEN PENCILS is a semi-biographical story loosely based on actual events and people from my teenage years. When the time came to structure the story, I drew inspiration from J.D Salinger’s Catcher in the Rye as my guide toward creating an engaging narrative about a Black teen’s struggle with mental health. My hope is that the story will resonate with anyone who is dealing with the same issues. In regards to the authenticity of the story, let’s just say the inspiration came from a crazy night at my Senior prom, some of which are still difficult to recall.
I found Jonah to be an extremely well-written and in-depth character. What was your inspiration for his emotional turmoil throughout the story?
The emotional turmoil throughout the story was based on my own struggles with mental health. Ever since I was a kid, I dealt with bouts of depression and manic episodes. Despite my successes with therapy and medication, I have always carried this shame from not being understood and guilt from feeling misunderstood. Through Jonah’s heroic and chaotic journey, I wanted to take the reader along this emotional rollercoaster so that they may gain insight into the challenges and beauty of having Bipolar Disorder.
What were some themes that were important for you to explore in this book?
The book explores several important themes that I found resonated throughout my life including coping with grief, managing mental health, complexities of identity, dealing with existential crisis, succumbing to peer pressure. The most important theme in the book was the idea how feeling broken can inspire us to become better, which became clear in my life when I lost my best friend, Dion, at a young age. With his passing, I also lost my innocence to the world. My eyes began to see the suffering and fragility in so many lives. Yet within these broken lives, I saw strength from failure and beauty of growth, both of which I strived for myself and personified through Jonah’s character.
What were some goals you set for yourself as a writer in this book?
BROKEN PENCILS deserves to be read and studied by anyone who has ever felt broken. In spite of the chaos and drama, the story is full of rich meaning and raw emotion meant to inspire readers to examine their own purpose in life. My goal is for the book to reach a national audience and span to international countries as well as college courses and book clubs. My dream is having the book adapted to film or TV series, but I know I’ll be too old to play Jonah. Upon the book’s release, readers will be able to purchase exclusive merchandise based on the book, including original sketch artwork and T-Shirts. There is already a sequel to BROKEN PENCILS in the works, so stay tuned. Visit www.jrrice.com for more updates.
Author Links: Website | Instagram
Jonah Tarver, a troubled Oakland teenager grappling with his parents’ troubled marriage, his own mental disorder, and the weight of his best friend’s death, embarks on a desperate quest to find meaning in life. Will he find the purpose he yearns for, or will he discover that life has no point like broken pencils?
BROKEN PENCILS
Broken Pencils by J.R. Rice delves into the turbulent life of Jonah Tarver, a teenager from Oakland facing the challenges of adolescence, family strife, and personal mental struggles. The story unfolds over a significant day in Jonah’s life, marked by key events: prom night, the eve of his birthday, and the anniversary of his best friend’s death. This convergence of milestones catapults him into a whirlwind of chaos and uncertainty.
The narrative paints a vivid picture of Jonah’s environment, where the constant arguments of his parents form a continuous, unsettling backdrop. Jonah strives to protect his younger brother from their family’s deteriorating dynamics. Compounding his distress is the strained relationship with his father and the perceived betrayal by his friend Trevon and girlfriend Taniesha. Prom night becomes a pivotal point as Jonah plunges into a world of drugs, alcohol, and reckless behavior, leading to unforeseen consequences and revelations, including a discovery about his father. J.R. Rice’s Broken Pencils is more than a story of a teenager’s life; it’s a reflection of how things from the past can unfold in a single day. This book is a poignant exploration of choice and consequence, distinguished by Rice’s skill in creating authentic, complex characters. These characters, each entangled in their own struggles, bring a rich, multifaceted perspective to the narrative. At its core, the novel grapples with the theme of brokenness, portraying it not as a defect to be mended but as an intrinsic part of the human experience. While it subtly addresses the experience of young black individuals, the book does not make race its focal point. Instead, an undercurrent of mental health issues weaves through the narrative, offering a layer for readers to uncover and interpret.
Rice offers an emotionally resonant, thoughtful, and philosophically charged narrative in Broken Pencils. It serves as a compelling reminder of the weight of our choices and their indelible impact on our lives and those around us.
LITERARY TITAN 