A novelist who wrote a book about punk rock in the 1980s and 1990s said words don’t have to be “beautiful” or “poetry,” but they need to be “clear.”

Garinè B. Isassi, who wrote “Start with the Backbeat,” about the experiences of a 22-year-old post-punk rocker in New York, told a campus audience she based the 2016 book partly on her own background.

“Something was happening in the music industry in the 80s and 90s that we now call diversity,” said Isassi, who said she worked at a New York record label when she was 23.

Still, she said some of her characters are nothing like her, including the punk rocker, a “proud black woman,” a black businessman, and a skinny heavy-metal guitarist.

“It helps to interview people in order to build your characters to understand who they are,” she told the 50-plus students and faculty members in the audience for the Creative Writing Department’s first Writers Reading event of the semester.

Issasi said she wrote the book to break stereotypes.

“Just because someone looks a certain way doesn’t mean anything about who they are inside,” Issasi, a self-described “short, middle-class, suburban mom,” said. “The stereotype we put on ourselves isn’t really real.”

Issasi, a songwriter, read passages and sang lyrics from her novel during the campus presentation and said putting music in the book “was a challenge.”

“It was more about describing the feelings of music that were evoked in the characters, ” Issasi said.

Issasi said it can take years to publish a book.

“The book took three years to write and two years to publish,” the writer said. “The two-year plan took longer than expected.”

Professor Garrett Brown, who organized the event, said he read Issasi’s book “cover to cover in a couple of nights” and called it “fun to read.”

Students who attended the event said they enjoyed it.

“I learned that passion in writing what you want to tell is really important,” second-year non-degree student Joey Perticone said. “ If you have an idea, you should pursue it, no matter how long it takes.”

“I think her background in a variety of different professions makes me very interested to see her talk about her experiences with writing,” Zoe Sharp, a second-year creative writing and psychology student, said of the author, who has worked as a writer for corporate and marketing clients. “I like the way that she brings pieces of her real life into her fiction.”

Brown agreed.

“It’s really good for students to see other working writers who are actively publishing and writing and can just give them a different perspective,” Brown said.

The next Writers Reading presentation will feature Washington, D.C., poet E. Ethelbert Miller on Oct. 10.