Interviews

Imagine working as a writer full time on your sailboat in Honolulu, Hawaii. Patricia Wood doesn’t have to use her imagination. She is living this dream. Her sailboat? A 48 foot ketch called Orion. This hasn’t always been the case. According to her blog other roles she’s occupied include: medical technologist, professional horsewoman, educator, diver, sailor, and PHD student. Her first novel, Lottery, was released by Putnam in 2007 (trade in 2008) and recently garnered her a placement on the shortlist for the Orange Prize for Fiction. She is married and has one son who lives in Washington State (the setting of her novel).

Moe: Looking back, did you choose the writing profession or did the profession choose you? When did you ‘know’ you were a writer?

Patricia Wood: I always have written. I wrote my first book at eight years of age. I always considered myself a writer even though I never finished any novels I started and only had a few articles published in horse magazines. When I went into the PhD program after I turned fifty I decided it was now or never and sat down and finished my novels. Once I started writing I didn’t stop. Lottery is my first published book but my fourth completed novel.

Moe: What inspires you?

Patricia Wood: Everything. My life experiences. People I meet. Things I’ve done. I have had a varied career from a horse trainer to a teacher. I’ve been in the Army, conducted shark research and helped crew a 39 ft sailboat from Hawaii to California across the Pacific Ocean.
All of these things will work into my novels at some point.

Moe: Every writer has a method to their writing. On a typical writing day, how would you spend your time?

Patricia Wood: When I’m not promoting Lottery I write in the salon of my sailboat early in the morning. During my first draft stage I write for hours at a time but editing and revising I am less fanatical.

Moe: How long does it take for you to complete a book you would allow someone to read? Do you write right through or do you revise as you go along?

Patricia Wood: It depends. Ordinarily a first draft takes me three to six months and if I have no other obligations I send it to beta readers shortly after I’ve done several more passes — probably my fourth or fifth draft. I power through my first draft and then make regular editing and revising passes from the beginning. When I think I am close to completing my novel then I start in the middle and work to the end.

Moe: When you sit down to write is any thought given to the genre or type of readers?

Patricia Wood: I write for myself. I’m a story teller. I am my own demographic. My readers are like myself.

Moe: When it comes to plotting, do you write freely or plan everything in advance?

Patricia Wood: It depends on the story but the main plot I always know in advance before I start. I often write the first and last chapter at the same time.

Moe: What kind of research do you do before and during a new book? Do you visit the places you write about?

Patricia Wood: I make it a point to write what I know about. It creates authenticity. During my writing if I come to a part I am unsure about I do the research at that time. For example I had to talk with an attorney in Snohomish County in Washington State to get information on guardianship matters and disability issues.

Moe: Where do your characters come from? How much of yourself and the people you know manifest into your characters?

Patricia Wood: My characters come from inside my head and I become them — they do not become me. I think subconsciously I use many things from people I know- a writer can’t help to do this.

Moe: Do you ever suffer from writer’s block?

Patricia Wood: I don’t believe in writers block. There are some times my writing goes slower because I get distracted – it’s very hard to write one book and promote another. I miss the uninterrupted blocks of time I had before I was published.

Moe: What do you hope readers gain, feel or experience when they read one of your books for the first time?

Patricia Wood: I hope they feel it’s a compelling story that they can’t put down and they are sucked into a world that they are loathe to leave — ultimately I hope they are so entranced by my novel that they recommend it to others and write online reviews.

Moe: Can you share three things you’ve learned about the business of writing since your first publication?

Patricia Wood: There are no rules. There are no guarantees. No one can predict a best seller. It’s a business. Too many writers only think about the art but you have to learn the business and the procedures. You have to be willing to promote yourself. You have to keep writing in the face of rejection and to want to tell stories more than anything. Many people like the idea of being an author but do not enjoy writing.

Moe: What is your latest release about?

Patricia Wood: Lottery is about a mentally challenged man, Perry L. Crandall, who wins the Washington State Lottery and finds that he has more friends and family than he knows what to do with. It is about love and trust and what defines us as capable. It was pitched as “Forrest Gump wins Powerball” but it is really a parable of our times. I strove to create an authentic portrayal of a man who is termed slow. It is not a fantasy like Forrest Gump nor is my character a savant like Forrest.

Many things went into the inspiration for Lottery. My ex brother-in-law had Down Syndrome, my PhD work is in disability studies and my father won six million dollars in the Washington State Lottery. These all give my novel authenticity.

Moe: What kind of books do you like to read?

Patricia Wood: All kinds. I do not discriminate. I will read everything from fantasy to mystery to literary. In desperation I have been known to read the backs of breakfast cereal boxes.

Moe: When you’re not writing what do you do for fun?

Patricia Wood: I write more. Seriously, I dive, ride my horses, sail, travel, and read.

Moe: New writers are always trying to glean advice from those with more experience. What suggestions do you have for new writers?

Patricia Wood: It seems trite to say “write” but that’s what I will say. Write every day. For me attending the Maui Writers Retreat and Conference (now held in Honolulu) was instrumental in helping me learn. Retreats where you can work in a group with an established writer are invaluable. I learned much about the business at the conference.

Moe: What is your favourite word?

Patricia Wood: Echt. To be true or genuine. It is Perry’s favorite word also.

• Lottery is available from Amazon.com.
• Lottery is available from Amazon.ca.

My interview with Patricia Wood appeared on 6/23/2008 at Literary Fiction, BellaOnline.

Visit Patricia Wood’s official website.

How perfect is it that a former military brat would find herself stringing together words as a novelist/screenwriter/magazine writer? Sarah Bird had been supporting herself entirely from her writing since 1980 having published six mid-list literary novels, one mystery, and five romance novels. This woman likes variety! Bird lives in Austin, Texas with her husband and eighteen-year-old son who is about to enter graduate school. Her latest release How Perfect is That will be released this summer. I hope you enjoy reading about this witty and entertaining author.

Moe: Looking back, did you choose the writing profession or did the profession choose you?

Sarah Bird: I believe it chose me in this way: Growing up, I was pathologically shy, deeply introverted and driven to make things. I loved creating little worlds. When my Air Force family was stationed in Japan, I made a tiny Japanese village with cotton for snow on the thatched roofs of the little huts that I made out of broom straw. I found that recreating my favorite books by, say, painting horrible little watercolors of Heidi’s grandfather’s home in the Alps, allowed me to extend the experience of being transported by those books. I once recruited my five brothers and sisters to re-enact “Uncle Tom’s Cabin.” Sadly, my older brother got perhaps too carried away being Simon Legree; there was whipping involved. In any case, introversion and a drive to escape into worlds I created predisposed me to the writing life.

Moe: When did you ‘know’ you were a writer?

Sarah Bird: Since I grew up in an Air Force family, frequently stationed on overseas bases, I had even less exposure to writers than most children. All the career options I was exposed to growing involved uniforms and missile silos.

The idea of being a writer never crossed my mind until I discovered a form so, hmmm, “approachable,” that it occurred to me that human beings might be producing it rather than the gods who wrote the books I loved. This form was the photo-romance. I discovered the photo-romance when I was an au pair in France. Ostensibly, I was in France learning French. Actually, I was fleeing a very bad love affair. In any case, I was a 20-year-old nitwit and the only person whose French was worse than mine was the three-month-old bebe I was taking care of. So I started buying photo-romances in a shy person’s way of learning to speak a language.

When I returned home, I sought out a comparable market in the United States and discovered true confession magazines. Pulp fiction: True Love, True Confession, Modern Love. I believe they have disappeared from the face of the earth. There could be no more ignominious way to begin, yet this was mine, and it fit my timid temperament in a way that no MFA program could have. These publications allowed me to learn how to tell a story in a voice that was not my own, to sink deeply into a character and her world, but, most importantly, since these “confessions” were all anonymous, they allowed me to simply learn how to fill up pages with no thought whatsoever that they would ever be associated with me.

Moe: What inspires you?

Sarah Bird: I am inspired by books I love and by worlds I want to capture and put into books such as the sub-cultures surrounding off-beat rodeos; the hothouse community of flamenco dance and guitar in New Mexico; the nomadic world of the military brat growing up in the Far East.

Moe: Every writer has a method to their writing. On a typical writing day, how would you spend your time?

Sarah Bird: Get up. Drink way too much tea. Spend far too much time on our mediocre local newspaper. Work too many crossword puzzles. Walk my dogs. Answer email. When I seriously stop and think about my day I can never quite pinpoint the moments when I actually write. I always seem to be taking the trash out or driving to my son’s school to bring him the homework he forgot or trying to decide what color to paint the trim. Just now, tallying up all the books I have published, I had a moment of wondering if I’d made the whole thing up.

Moe: How long does it take for you to complete a book you would allow someone to read?

Sarah Bird: The shortest amount of time it’s ever taken me to write a book was four months. The longest was fifteen years.

Moe: Do you write right through or do you revise as you go along?

Sarah Bird: I try to get as much down as I can without censoring myself too much, then I go back and revise. Sometimes a lot. I wrote essentially five completely different versions of my last novel, “The Flamenco Academy.” It took me that many attempts to get the form, the tone, and the setting right. Excruciating.

Moe: When you sit down to write is any thought given to the genre or type of readers?

Sarah Bird: I find it very inhibiting to think of an actual human reading what I write. While writing “Flamenco,” I had to put readers farther out of my mind than usual since this was my first book that contained no humor whatsoever and I knew that some readers would be disappointed. And they were.

As far as genre, I write mid-list literary novels. Fortunately, almost the only convention in this genre is that the work has to clearly not be genre. I am familiar with genre conventions. The vast majority of writers support themselves by teaching. I always knew that I was not capable of sustaining the level of introversion that teaching requires. Instead, I supported myself during the early years of my career by writing romance novels. Like pulp fiction, they were wonderful for learning the mechanics of writing. Since this wasn’t the form I aspired to, they served as a sort of out of town tryout where I could fill up pages without torturing myself about every word.

Moe: When it comes to plotting, do you write freely or plan everything in advance?

Sarah Bird: I didn’t really understand plotting until I spent nine years working as a screenwriter. Writing in film is a group enterprise. Probably too much so. But it requires outlines and presentations, so I was forced to know every tick of a story before I told it. This flattens the work to a degree. With luck, talented actors then go in and reinflate it. Still I prefer to allow novels to unfold as they will, to take the shape they are meant to take without my intervention. The characters guide me through the story. Once I know who they are, they tell me very decisively what they would and would not do. Generally, it helps me not to know how a book will end as that keeps me from tipping my hand.

Moe: What kind of research do you do before and during a new book?

Sarah Bird: I consider research the great reward of the writing life. It is a rabbit hole I tend to go too far down and spend too much time in. The kind of research varies for each book. The book I set in the world of off-beat rodeos began as the thesis I did for a degree in photo-journalism. Photography is a magic way to research. With a camera in front of my face, I could disappear into whatever world I was exploring. Plus the photos were fabulous visual notes and sending prints to subjects I wanted to interview further was a great way to make friends. My last novel was the most fascinating to research. Flamenco in New Mexico has a mesmerizing history that combines the Gypsies thousand-year exile from India; the Moorish Conquest of Spain; the conquistadors in the New World; and lots of substance abuse. My current book, How Perfect Is That, involved a different sort of research as it is set in Austin’s high and low society.

Moe: Do you ever suffer from writer’s block?

Sarah Bird: Early on in my career, I saw that I was the type of person who might latch onto “obstacles” if I allowed that to happen. That I could easily obsess about not having the exact right sort of paper or validation from the outside world. So, I committed to writing no matter what the circumstances, to not believing in writer’s block. If I didn’t have a desk, I wrote in bed on a legal pad. If I didn’t have time, I lived ultra-cheap so I could exist on a half-time job. This was great training as it now enables me to completely ignore my incredibly messy house and just about anything else that would interfere with writing.

Moe: Can you share three things you’ve learned about the business of writing since your first publication?

Sarah Bird: As far as the business goes, as far as making a living as a writer, the one thing that has sustained me is range. I’ve always done any type of writing that paid the bills: magazine, film, true confessions, romance novels, agency publications. All this writing for hire kept me alive so I could do what I loved most which was novels.

Don’t go out to lunch. I find going out to lunch to be deadly to productivity as it pulls me out of the interior world I have to inhabit to write.

As for the question beginning writers have about agents, here is my recommendation: If you are writing a novel, find one that is similar to yours, call the publisher and ask who edited that book. Then send that person a snappy one-page letter mentioning how much you esteem the published book, what yours is about, and why you believe the editor will be interested in it.

Moe: What is your latest release about?

Sarah Bird: I wrote How Perfect Is That to cheer myself up, to make myself laugh. I wrote most of this book in 2003 when I was in despair over what was happening in our country. I needed a way to think about the war; about the stolen election; about toxic, Gilded Age levels of opulence and obliviousness. And I needed to do it without wanting to drink Drano. As always, humor, seemed to be the way out.

During a conversation with a friend who couldn’t afford to get a Pap smear, my need to understand collided with a need to laugh. She was the fifth highly educated friend I’d spoken with in as many weeks who had either just lost a job or had a job with such crappy insurance that basic health care was out of the question. Tired of simply wringing my hands, I suggest that she should move back into the co-op boarding house where we both had lived when we were students at the University of Texas. Why, with the money she saved she’d have enough for that elusive Pap smear in no time!

The absurdity of that prospect–moving back into your old college boarding house–tickled us both and, suddenly, laughing seemed like a lot more fun than hand-wringing and railing and wailing. So, rather than futilely obsess about the fate of America, I created a character who was every bit as oblivious, greedy, and short-sighted as those who had delivered us to our current fate. In an attempt to keep hope alive, I also made this scoundrel redeemable. We’ll see if the same holds true for America.

Moe: What kind of books do you like to read?

Sarah Bird: I adore great novels with comedic elements and seek them out constantly. Some of the early favorites that formed me as a writer are Confederacy of Dunces, Lady Oracle by Margaret Atwood, Ladies Man by Richard Price, all the novels of Charles Portiss (Dog of the South, Norwood, True Grit, Masters of Atlantis, Gringos), and most of Thomas Berger’s, particularly Little Big Man. I love every book that Nick Hornby and Tom Perrotta have ever written.

Moe: When you’re not writing what do you do for fun?

Sarah Bird: Drift through big box stores with a tankard of Diet Coke in my shopping cart. I find Costco to be particularly soothing.

Moe: New writers are always trying to glean advice from those with more experience. What suggestions do you have for new writers?

Sarah Bird: In the year 2008, it’s almost presumptuous of old school writers to tell young writers anything. The landscape has changed so fundamentally that I am always asking young writers now how they do it. How much of a factor is blogging? How do writers make a living anymore with so many giving it away online? With newspapers imploding, how do readers find out about new writers or new books by old writers?

Moe: If you weren’t a writer what would you be?

Sarah Bird: Psychotic. I say that only half in jest. Temperamentally, I’m really only suited to be sitting alone in a room for ten hours a day making up lies.

Moe: What is your favorite word?

Sarah Bird: Is there a more perfect word than onomatopoeia? I’m sure I’m not alone in cherishing onomatopoeia as my first “big” word. I remember experiencing this tiny blip of power when I learned, when I “owned” this word. It made me avaricious for other words that were both euphonious and impressive. I was quite the little nerd.

• How Perfect Is That is available from Amazon.com.
• How Perfect Is That is available from Amazon.ca.

My interview with Sarah Bird was first posted on 4/1/2008 at Literary Fiction, BellaOnline.

Visit Sarah Bird’s official website.

Dividing her time between New York City and the coast of Maine, Beth Gutcheon has been making a living for over thirty years as a full-time writer. She has seven novels in print as well as two works of non-fiction. Her most recent novel is Leeway Cottage with Good-bye and Amen coming soon. To keep things exciting, between novels Beth has worked as a screen writer. You might recognize the Lifetime TV film The Good Fight starring Christine Lhati and Terry O’Quinn. Please enjoy getting to know this talented author.

Moe: Looking back, did you choose the writing profession or did the profession choose you? When did you ‘know’ you were a writer?

Beth Gutcheon: Writing chose me; what I wanted to do was read, but I couldn’t figure out how to get paid to do that. I find writing hard – I think most real writers do – but getting published was never hard for me, so that seemed like a clue that it was something I could do.

Moe: Every writer has a method to his or her writing. On a typical writing day, how would you spend your time?

Beth Gutcheon: I work five days a week, at home, in silence. Ideally I talk to no one until I’ve either done my required number of words or been at work a certain number of hours, five or six. I do speak briefly to the dog walker at midday, usually about the state of the dog’s bowels.

Moe: How long does it take for you to complete a book you would allow someone to read? Do you write right through or do you revise as you go along?

Beth Gutcheon Once I’ve started writing, I’d say it’s usually six to nine months before I have a draft someone can read. My work rule is that at the start of the writing day I am allowed to polish the work of the day before, but not to go further back. I do no major revisions until I’ve written the end, because you never really know what a story means until you know how it ends.

Moe: When you sit down to write is any thought given to the genre or type of readers?

Beth Gutcheon: I always think of my readers. I do think, always, that if they are as I imagine them, on their deathbeds they will not be regretting things they didn’t do, but all the books they meant to get to but never did. So if they are going to grant me any of their precious lifetime booklist slots, I want to be sure it’s worth it – that they are entertained, that they will learn things and feel things, and that when they get to the end they will really know they’ve been somewhere.

Moe: When it comes to plotting, do you write freely or plan everything in advance?

Beth Gutcheon: I always know before I begin what the setting is, who the major characters are, how the arc of the book will look and what ending I’m heading for. I know what the book is about. But that leaves a great deal that has to evolve as I go along.

Moe: What kind of research do you do before and during a new book? Do you visit the places you write about?

Beth Gutcheon: I prefer to research by reading when possible. I’ll ask for specialized help from humans when I need it, but I never know what I’m looking for until I find it; if someone is trying to help me by talking to me, it’s harder to negotiate through what I can’t use to find what I can. I do absolutely visit places I write about, if I don’t already know them well.

Moe: Where do your characters come from? How much of yourself and the people you know manifest into your characters?

Beth Gutcheon: The personality and biographical details of each character have to be very real to me, but often they are constructed out of very small bits of things I know or have seen. I build a biography for each important character before I start writing, and often, when doing a major revision, I will change something major, like the character’s name, so that the whole person evolves away from the little shiny bits of real data I started with.

Moe: Can you share three things you’ve learned about the business of writing since your first publication?

Beth Gutcheon: The worst possible reason to use something in a story is “it really happened.”

Be very careful about whom you show early drafts to. Be sure you know what kind of readers they are, that they like the kind of book you are trying to write, and be sure that they truly wish you to succeed, both consciously and unconsciously.

Your agent is the most important professional relationship you will have. Find someone who believes in your work, to whom your success is important, who can also get her phone calls returned.

Moe: What is your latest release about?

Beth Gutcheon: My forthcoming novel, Good-bye and Amen, follows Leeway Cottage, and is about the next generation of the characters in Leeway Cottage.

Moe: What kind of books do you like to read?

Beth Gutcheon: Books of letters. Biography, literary fiction. Some poetry. I review audio books as well, and through my ears like to read more plot-driven fiction, and mysteries. At the moment I am reading the John P. Marquand novel Sincerely, Willis Wayde, because a reading group I visited recommended it (it is wonderful), the letters of Kingsley Amis, and the poems of Robert Hass.

Moe: New writers are always trying to glean advice from those with more experience. What suggestions do you have for new writers?

Beth Gutcheon: Be sure you are writing in the right form. There are many young ones trying to write short stories, because short stories are what is most taught, when their gift is more suited to longer fiction. Think hard about what you most like to read, and don’t be afraid to try the long form. Or, be afraid, but try anyway, if novels are what you love to read.

Moe: If you weren’t a writer what would you be?

Beth Gutcheon: If I weren’t a writer I hope I’d be a librarian.

Moe: What is your favorite word?

Beth Gutcheon: Favorite word! What a great question. I’ll let you know in a year or two.

• Purchase a copy of Leeway Cottage from Amazon.com.
• Purchase a copy of Leeway Cottage from Amazon.ca.

My interview with Beth Gutcheon was originally published 12/27/2007 at Literary Fiction, BellaOnline.

Visit Beth Gutcheon’s official website.

My Summer of Southern Discomfort is Stephanie Gayle’s first novel. This Somerville, Massachusetts native is a MIT Administrative Assistant at Massachusetts Institute of Technology by day and a writer by night; although she likes to think of writing as her full-time job. Stephanie has a great sense of humor, my guess, without even trying. I’m sure you’ll enjoy her interview as much as I did.

Moe: Looking back, did you choose the writing profession or did the profession choose you?

Stephanie Gayle: I don’t believe any profession chooses you. I always had a facility for words and loved to tell stories. I started telling people I was a writer once my novel was bought. That felt great, being able to say, “Oh me? I’m a writer.”

Moe: What inspires you?

Stephanie Gayle: Nature. Good books. Observing people. Reading something I wrote and thinking “not half bad.”

Moe: Every writer has a method to their writing. On a typical writing day, how would you spend your time?

Stephanie Gayle: On a good weekday I get in three hours of writing: one hour at lunch and two hours in the evening after I’ve eaten dinner. On weekends I write first thing in the morning for about two hours. Then I’ll go back and write more throughout the day, depending on what else I have planned.

Moe: How long does it take for you to complete a book you would allow someone to read? Do you write right through or do you revise as you go along?

Stephanie Gayle: At least nine months for one of my writer/editor readers, but for regular folks, closer to three years. My agent had to tell me, “Stephanie, let your mother read the galley of your novel.” I wanted things perfect before anyone saw my story, even my mother, who thinks everything I write is perfect. I revised more as I wrote with my first novel. With my current work in progress I wrote right through and am now editing, scalpel in hand.

Moe: When you sit down to write is any thought given to the genre or type of readers?

Stephanie Gayle: No. I find those thoughts restrictive. I tell myself a story. That’s how it starts.

Moe: When it comes to plotting, do you write freely or plan everything in advance?

Stephanie Gayle: I’m a terrible plotter. I prefer to create strong characters, stick pins in them, and see how they react. In those rare instances where I have plotted at length, the story almost always veers off course. Events evolve and circumstance change, just like life.

Moe: What kind of research do you do before and during a new book? Do you visit the places you write about?

Stephanie Gayle: I do rigorous research before and during the writing of my books. Lots of reading of legal cases, code books, and papers on law. I didn’t visit Macon, a fact that surprises most people who have read My Summer of Southern Discomfort. I couldn’t afford the airfare, so I did loads of research. It’s amazing what good stuff you can find if you look hard enough.

Moe: Where do your characters come from? How much of yourself and the people you know manifest into your characters?

Stephanie Gayle: My characters usually have a trait or two that comes from people I know, but I don’t ever think “let’s rewrite so and so.” Instead I decide that my character, Natalie, is freakishly organized. I think, who do I know like that? I might include a specific trait or detail of that person in Natalie’s make up. For the most part my characters are brand new and I look forward to figuring them out.

Moe: Do you ever suffer from writer’s block? If yes, what measures do you take to get past it?

Stephanie Gayle: No, but admitting this makes me nervous. As if some god of writing is going to see this and go “Aha! We missed one!” and then smite me with writer’s block.

Moe: What do you hope readers gain, feel or experience when they read one of your books for the first time?

Stephanie Gayle: I hope they find something true, something they recognize, even if it’s only a tiny detail. I love when an author encapsulates something I’ve seen thousands of times in a new way or in peerless prose. That moment of recognition is powerful. I want to be able to make my readers feel that.

Moe: Can you share three things you’ve learned about the business of writing since your first publication?

Stephanie Gayle: It is a business. Rejection is well and truly not personal. It just feels that way. Have alternate titles for your work prepared in case someone in the publishing house chucks your original title. Scrambling for a new title is not fun at all. Writers are generous people willing to share what they know.

Moe: What is your latest release about?

Stephanie Gayle: My Summer of Southern Discomfort is about Natalie Goldberg, a liberal lawyer from the northeast who impetuously moves to Macon, Georgia and becomes a public prosecutor. She alienates her family, becomes a complete fish out of water, and is then assigned a death penalty case. She’s in trouble because she opposes the death penalty. It’s about her coming to terms with the decisions she’s made and those she plans to make.

The original novel idea was a three part narrative, and Natalie was just the first narrator, but that changed during the writing. The third “main” character as originally conceived isn’t in the book at all.

Moe: What kind of books do you like to read?

Stephanie Gayle: Fiction and quirky non-fiction. I’ve been reading lots of contemporary fiction lately though the last book I read was a biography of famed Australian wallpaper designer, Florence Broadhurst.

Moe: When you’re not writing what do you do for fun?

Stephanie Gayle: I read, I watch movies, I bake, I travel (I’d like to do more of this), I visit museums (the more off-beat the better). I also like to spend time with the friends I don’t see nearly enough of when I’m embroiled in novel writing.

Moe: New writers are always trying to glean advice from those with more experience. What suggestions do you have for new writers?

Stephanie Gayle: Read widely. Ask questions of other writers. Take a writing class or join a good critique group. Keep a notebook by your bed because there is nothing worse than losing those precious 2:00 A.M. bursts of genius. Trust me, you won’t remember them in the morning.

Moe: If you weren’t a writer what would you be?

Stephanie Gayle: Less happy. In terms of career, I don’t know. Ambition has never been my strong suit.

Moe: What is your favorite word?

Stephanie Gayle: I’m pretty fond of deciduous and homunculus.

• Indulge in a copy of My Summer of Southern Discomfort at Amazon.com.
• Indulge in a copy of My Summer of Southern Discomfort at Amazon.ca.

My interview with Stephanie Gayle originally published 11/25/2007 at Literary Fiction, BellaOnline.

Visit Stephanie Gayle’s official website.

Toronto, Ontario native Catherine Bush has three novels under her belt, the latest being Claire’s Head. All three of her books have won awards. She has had the opportunity to teach what she loves at a wide array of Universities, including Concordia University (Montreal, Quebec), the University of Florida, Humber School for Writers (Toronto, Ontario), the University of Guelph (Guelph, Ontario), McMaster University (Hamilton, Ontario ), the University of New Brunswick and the University of Alberta. Currently, Catherine alternates writing full-time with teaching Creative Writing for the University of British Columbia’s low-residency MFA program. She has been writing stories since she could string sentences together. When she finds the time, she likes to spoil her standard poodle with dog agility classes.

Moe: Looking back, did you choose the writing profession or did the profession choose you?

Catherine Bush: I still don’t think of it as a profession: I think of it as a passion, a way of giving meaning to my life, and I have shaped my life in order to pursue this passion. That I’m able to make something of a living from it is great, an added bonus, but never anything I take for granted. Writing is above all an act of faith, a belief in writing fiction as a way to create more meaning in the world.

Moe: When did you ‘know’ you were a writer?

Catherine Bush: Who was it who said, I’m not interested in being a writer, I’m interested in the act of writing. Anyway, that’s how I feel. Being a writer means not much at all unless you’re actually writing or figuring out a way to be writing. I remember coming to that recognition first when I was around sixteen.

Moe: What inspires you?

Catherine Bush: A chord of Bach, the squeak of geese wings in the sky overhead, the disappearance of someone from my life, the need to look for the ‘why,’ the pressure of consequence, to create some kind of order out of the tumult all around us.

Moe: Every writer has a method to their writing. On a typical writing day, how would you spend your time?

Catherine Bush: I work best through the morning into the early afternoon. I can’t write for more than four to five hours at a stretch. After that my brain is tired and it’s time to go for a walk.

Moe: How long does it take for you to complete a book you would allow someone to read? Do you write right through or do you revise as you go along?

Catherine Bush: Generally I’ll work on a novel for about five years, and someone might first read it about three years into that process. I move consistently forward through the book but may rework sections many times as I progress.

Moe: When you sit down to write is any thought given to the genre or type of readers?

Catherine Bush: I write for a reader who’s passionate and attentive and eager to enter the world that I’m endeavoring to create.

Moe: When it comes to plotting, do you write freely or plan everything in advance?

Catherine Bush: I have a sense of the trajectory of the novel and write to discover the journey. I have a place I’m trying to get to, but sometimes when I get there, it is not the place I think it’s going to be.

Moe: What kind of research do you do before and during a new book? Do you visit the places you write about?

Catherine Bush: I do research but not as much as some readers might think: enough to be able to convince a reader, through a choice of detail, that I know what I’m talking about. I aim to be a convincing liar, not an authority. I let the story itself guide me in terms of what I need to know and where I need to go.

Moe: Where do your characters come from?

Catherine Bush: Ask them, not me! They appear, knocking on the door.

Moe: How much of yourself and the people you know manifest into your characters?

Catherine Bush: I steal and I transform, as all good writers do. I try to follow Henry James’ advice: to think of what constitutes your own experience in the broadest possible terms, and, in his words, “try to be one of those people upon whom nothing is lost.”

Moe: Do you ever suffer from writer’s block? If yes, what measures do you take to get past it?

Catherine Bush: I ask myself questions, walk away from the work, and let the unconscious take over for a while. If you can ask yourself the right question, you’re halfway there.

Moe: What do you hope readers gain, feel or experience when they read one of your books for the first time?

Catherine Bush: I’d like them to be transformed in some way.

Moe: Can you share three things you’ve learned about the business of writing since your first publication?

Catherine Bush: Don’t think of it as a business: think of writing as something you do because you love it. But be pragmatic and educate yourself about the publishing industry and people in it. And buy as many books as you can. A culture of writers depends on a culture of readers – and book buyers. And often writers and readers are the same people.

Moe: What is your latest release about?

Catherine Bush: I describe Claire’s Head as a kind of neurological mystery: it’s about two adult sisters, who both suffer from migraines. When one disappears, the other goes in search of her and sets off on a journey that I think of as a bit like a contemporary Alice in Wonderland adventure, in which the world she tumbles through gets progressively stranger, its strangeness shaped in part by her own migraines.

Moe: What kind of books do you like to read?

Catherine Bush: Novels with amazing sentences in them, narratives that ask me, in some way small or large, to transform myself, or make myself anew. I’m reading Spanish writer Javier Marias at the moment, and Gil Adamson’s The Outlander, and the Dark Materials trilogy by the children’s writer Philip Pullman.

Moe: When you’re not writing what do you do for fun?

Catherine Bush: Dog agility classes with my standard poodle.

Moe: New writers are always trying to glean advice from those with more experience. What suggestions do you have for new writers?

Catherine Bush: Writing requires a combination of talent and tenacity. Being tenacious, and being prepared to give yourself over to the process of writing, rather than obsessing about the product, is exceedingly important.

Moe: If you weren’t a writer what would you be?

Catherine Bush: Well, I’d like to be a member of the Superdogs agility team.

Moe: What is your favorite word?

Catherine Bush: Peregrinate. It means to wander. Writing is all about the journey.

• Get your copy of Claire’s Head from Amazon.com.
• Get your copy of Claire’s Head from Amazon.ca.

My interview with Catherine Bush was originally published 11/2/2007 at Literary Fiction, BellaOnline.

Visit Catherine Bush’s official website.

The Sami Rohr Prize for emerging Jewish writers was recently awarded for Tamar Yellin’s novel The Genizah at the House of Shepher (also awarded the Ribalow Prize). Her collection of stories, Kafka in Bronteland, received the Reform Judaism Prize. I wonder what award Tales of the Ten Lost Tribes will achieve when it is released next year. This successful author has been writing fiction since childhood. Like most writers she has another profession. When not writing “pretty much full-time” she is a qualified teacher working as a Faith Tutor in schools, teaching non-Jewish children about Jewish customs. Yorkshire, England is home to her and her husband.

Moe: Looking back, did you choose the writing profession or did the profession choose you? When did you ‘know’ you were a writer?

Tamar Yellin: Writing definitely chose me. I knew I was a writer from before being able to write. I used to fill notebooks with scribbles and illustrations. I remember loving the feeling of the pen in my hand. I must have had stories to tell, but I can’t remember them now!

Moe: What inspires you?

Tamar Yellin: Life inspires me and reading inspires me. Moments of strong emotion beg to be expressed in words. The small, often humorous or poignant details of life – like the piles of loose change my husband leaves lying around the house – ask to be written into some story. Or I will pick up a volume of Katherine Mansfield, say, and as soon as I begin reading her wonderful words I want to rush to my desk and start writing.

Music can do it, too. There’s often a particular piece of music associated with the book I’m working on, and when I listen to it, I glow with anticipation. With The Genizah at the House of Shepher, it was guitarist John Williams playing Gowers’ ‘Stevie.’ For me it expressed all the tragedy and yearning of my protagonist, Amnon.

Moe: Every writer has a method to their writing. On a typical writing day, how would you spend your time?

Tamar Yellin: Soon after breakfast I unplug the phone and climb the ladder to my attic study. I switch on my computer and, some two or three hours later, I come back down and take the dog for a walk on the moors. (She’s usually whining at the foot of the ladder by then.) What happens in between is what I call the front-of-the-brain work. It’s hard, and there’s no way round it. I can’t do it in the afternoons. I do a lot of my creative thinking while I’m out walking or performing household chores.

Moe: How long does it take for you to complete a book you would allow someone to read? Do you write right through or do you revise as you go along?

Tamar Yellin: I’m very secretive about my work. I can’t let anyone see it until I feel it’s ready. It takes years. I revise as I go along. Each day I re-read what I wrote yesterday and tweak it. This happens over and over – it goes through countless revisions. I may produce five or six full drafts before the book is ready to be seen.

Moe: When you sit down to write is any thought given to the genre or type of readers?

Tamar Yellin: No, I never think about that while I’m writing. I’m completely focused on the work itself.

Moe: When it comes to plotting, do you write freely or plan everything in advance?

Tamar Yellin: It’s a mixture. I have the general arc of the novel in mind before I start. I usually know the architecture (for example, Tales of the Ten Lost Tribes is precisely that: a novel in ten tales, one for each tribe). I sketch out chapter plans but these are usually fluid. I don’t like putting a cage around my creativity. Unless there are unknowns, there’s no voyage of discovery, and that is what writing a novel should be. Yes, I get into muddles, sometimes seemingly hopeless ones, but that’s part of the process. One of the greatest joys of writing is the flash of revelation that takes you through the maze. I keep a notebook to hand and write down everything that occurs to me, because if you don’t, you are certain to forget it.

Moe: What kind of research do you do before and during a new book? Do you visit the places you write about?

Tamar Yellin: Research is very inspirational. I do lots of it. For The Genizah at the House of Shepher, I continued to research throughout the entire writing of the book – for thirteen years. The novel was inspired by my own family history, and it was all fired off by the archive of family documents we discovered in my grandfather’s attic. So I was translating my grandfather’s World War I diaries, the letters he wrote to my father in the ‘thirties, the Hebrew newspapers he edited and the book he published about old Jerusalem. It was very moving, getting to know my grandfather in this way, because he died when I was nine months old. I also researched in libraries from Jerusalem to Yorkshire, Oxford and Toronto.

The spirit of place is always very important in my fiction. For the sections in Genizah about nineteenth-century Jerusalem I visited the Jewish Quarter of the Old City, but it was strange, because it had all been rebuilt within the last twenty years. It was like a simulacrum of itself. I immersed myself in old photographs and lithographs from that time, in travelogues and memoirs, until I began visiting the Old City in my dreams, wandering its lanes, walking its roof-gardens… It became an obsession.

Moe: Where do your characters come from? How much of yourself and the people you know manifest into your characters?

Tamar Yellin: I’m a pretty autobiographical writer. I often draw on the material of my own life for my fiction, but I mould it in the way a potter moulds their clay – I make what I want of it.

My fictional characters are composites. They may possess elements of myself, of people I know plus some purely imagined characteristics. The imagination has to be free to invent, otherwise the character is dead on the page. For example, Julia in my story ‘Mrs Rubin and her Daughter’ is a writer, but she isn’t me – she’s the fictive embodiment of someone I maybe could have become under different circumstances. You push the borders of your own experience when you create. It’s the way you ask questions of yourself and make new discoveries.

Moe: Do you ever suffer from writer’s block? If yes, what measures do you take to get past it?

Tamar Yellin: I struggled for years to write my first published novel, Genizah. I would write and write and junk what I had written – it was just terrible. It was then that I realised that writer’s block isn’t not being able to write; it’s not being able to write the way you want.

Sometimes it’s necessary just to stop and take some time out. Time spent away from the desk can be just as important as the time spent beating your brains out over the laptop.

Moe: What do you hope readers gain, feel or experience when they read one of your books for the first time?

Tamar Yellin: The main thing I’ve learnt since becoming a published writer is that every reader brings something different to what they read. They bring themselves. And, while they are opening up to the experience you are offering them on the page, they are also, consciously or unconsciously, looking for themselves. If they can connect with what I have written, if they can find themselves there, I have done my job as a novelist.

Moe: Can you share three things you’ve learned about the business of writing since your first publication?

Tamar Yellin: As a struggling writer you can spend so many years striving toward the holy grail of publication you can forget that beyond publication there is a whole new set of challenges. It can be very hard to get noticed, especially if you don’t have the big marketing guns of a major publisher behind you. Cast your bread upon the waters – you never know when it might come back to you a hundredfold. Be patient, but also a bit pushy. Always get a qualified disinterested third party to check over your contract before you sign it.

Moe: What is your latest release about?

Tamar Yellin: The Genizah at the House of Shepher is a family saga covering four generations of the Shepher family from Lithuania to Jerusalem, England and Azerbaijan. It’s also a thriller about a missing biblical codex and the search for the true text of the Bible. Shulamit is an English biblical scholar who returns to her grandparents’ house in Jerusalem after a twenty-year absence to find herself embroiled in a family dispute over an ancient handwritten copy of the Bible which has been discovered in the attic. In retracing the history of the codex she uncovers her own family history, questioning and reassessing her own sense of identity, exile and belonging.

The story was inspired by my own family history, when we discovered an important book in the attic of my grandparents’ house in Jerusalem just as it was about to be demolished. It contained handwritten notes on the text of the most perfect manuscript of the Bible ever written, the Aleppo Codex, which had been lost in a pogrom in 1947. This book was the only surviving record of what the differences in the text had been, and it was ultimately used to reconstruct the lost codex. Even tiny variations in the sacred text can be of tremendous significance to scholars and also, of course, to code-seekers. But I was using the idea as a metaphor for the many differing versions we have of history, of our family histories; and of the moments of choice which alter the text of our lives forever.

Moe: What kind of books do you like to read?

Tamar Yellin: Language is tremendously important to me, so they have to be well-written. I am always learning as I read, so I seek out the best teachers. The Brontes, Tolstoy, Mansfield, Woolf, Kundera, Primo Levi, W. G. Sebald, are among my favourite writers. I also love poetry.

Moe: When you’re not writing what do you do for fun?

Tamar Yellin: You mean writing isn’t fun?! To unwind I go for long walks in the beautiful Yorkshire countryside. I listen to music (I especially enjoy live jazz) and enjoy all sorts of films from foreign art films to the latest blockbuster.

Moe: New writers are always trying to glean advice from those with more experience. What suggestions do you have for new writers?

Tamar Yellin: Read and read and read. Write and write and write. Be passionate, patient and persevering.

Moe: If you weren’t a writer what would you be?

Tamar Yellin: If I weren’t a writer I wouldn’t be me.

Moe: What is your favourite word?

Tamar Yellin: The right one in its place.

• Purchase The Genizah At The House Of Shepher from Amazon.com.
• Purchase The Genizah At The House Of Shepher from Amazon.ca.

My interview with Tamar Yellin was originally published 4/30/2007 at Literary Fiction, BellaOnline.

Visit Tamar Yellin’s official website.

Twelve novels, two short story collections, a non-fiction book, and one of a two-volume project on Becoming a Writer stand as an honorable reflection of this author’s career. Gail Godwin, a three-time National Book Award nominee, has been writing seriously since 1959 and first became published in 1970. She has worked as a full-time writer since 1974. Her current project, The Red Nun: A Tale of Unfinished Desires is three-quarters complete with release set for 2008, along with the second volume of her apprentice journals. Queen of the Underworld is her most recent release. Gail’s companion of 30 years, composer Robert Starer died in 2001. She has two furry children, Waldo and Zeb, and four not-so-furry god-children. Continue reading to learn more about Gail Godwin and her writing life.

Moe: Looking back, did you choose the writing profession or did the profession choose you? When did you ‘know’ you were a writer?

Gail Godwin: I grew up with a writing mother. She was a newspaperwoman and published short stories in pulp magazines and was working on novels throughout her lifetime. I learned to type before I could write. Trying to imitate her at the typewriter. And sent my first story out at the age of 9 to Child Life. It was rejected. As I was/am one of the self-doubters of the world, I did not let myself think of myself as a writer until my first novel was accepted by a publisher (The Perfectionists, 1970)

Moe: What inspires you?

Gail Godwin: When I hear of, or think of, or dream or daydream about, a situation or a group of characters whose plight alerts my imaginative powers. A Mother and Two Daughters evolved directly out of a long letter from an old school friend, telling me about a disastrous fight with her mother and sister six months after her father’s death. I wanted to live in that family–and, of course, make up more details of an affluent, middle-class family with one rebellious daughter. The Finishing School came from a dream in which I was sitting on the threshold of an old ruined stone cottage with a dramatic woman, who suddenly took off into a rainstorm. I woke up with the first sentence: “Last night I dreamed of Ursula DeVane…” Though the name in the dream was Bertha deVane. Later, when my mother was reading the manuscript, she said, “You can’t call her Bertha. It isn’t enigmatic enough. Also it reminds readers of Mr. Rochester’s mad wife.”

Moe: Every writer has a method to their writing. On a typical writing day, how would you spend your time?

Gail Godwin: My writing life has changed somewhat during the six years I have been living by myself. I am more likely to wake at 2-3 in the morning and savor that stillness and make notes about what I am writing, or read whatever I am reading or re-reading (my most recent re-reads have been Nicholas Nickleby and Atwood’s Alias Grace.) I begin writing in my study about 9:30-10:00 a.m. and work steadily for about three hours. Then, on Tuesdays and Thursdays, I rush off to work out at a gym. On other afternoons I shop for food, go to the bookstore or library, occasionally am invited out to dinner or have people here for dinner. My favorite evenings are the ones when I sit on the sofa with the cats on my legs, making notes in my journal about the day and about my plans for what I will next write in the novel.

Moe: How long does it take for you to complete a book you would allow someone to read? Do you write right through or do you revise as you go along?

Gail Godwin: I go page by page. More like sculpting. Cutting out all I don’t want to say and finding a shape of what most nearly approximates the vision I have. I keep a legal pad to my right, for working out words and concepts. I type fast on my keyboard and see how it looks on the screen. For my last two books, I have formatted the page on the screen as I want it to look as a finished book. Margins, font, type size. Red Nun, for instance, is in Bookman Old Style font, 11 type size; 1.5 spacing; margins: l&r: 2.38, top: 1:88, bottom 2.13. This is a kind of reward in advance for me. I used to hate the look of a manuscript. It looked so… unpublished.

Moe: When you sit down to write is any thought given to the genre or type of readers?

Gail Godwin: I hope this doesn’t sound too introverted, but when I sit down to write I think of satisfying the Reader in Me and finding out the things I still crave to know.

Moe: When it comes to plotting, do you write freely or plan everything in advance?

Gail Godwin: I plot some, but it is by no means a straightforward thing. I have to know my characters pretty well before I know which of their strengths and weaknesses could influence the story around them. It has taken me two years of working on the novel before I begin to glimpse exactly what happened and what in the makeup of ALL these people conspired to make it happen–and, beyond that, the larger implications, the cosmic ones.

Moe: What kind of research do you do before and during a new book? Do you visit the places you write about?

Gail Godwin: For specific historic or esoteric detail (military prisons in this country in WWII—for “Tony” in Evensong; what Miami court a prostitute in 1953 would be tried in—for “Ginevra” in Queen of the Underworld) I hire a researcher (Dan Starer, Research for Writers). For everything else, I work out of volumes in my library (I needed to know the latitude and longitude of Boston the other day) or sometimes I Google something (I wanted to know more about the Catholic priest Basil Maturin, who died on the Lusitania in 1915, and found a perfect essay written by someone who had known him.)

Moe: Where do your characters come from? How much of yourself and the people you know manifest into your characters?

Gail Godwin: In The Good Husband, the four main characters are four very different parts of myself. (I talk about this in the readers group guide in the back of the Ballantine trade paperback edition). In The Finishing School, I wanted to write about an unreliable mentor (Ursula DeVane) and I consulted my own shadow: the self I might have become if my artistic desires had been unfulfilled: how might I have presented myself to an impressionable young worshiper ready to believe anything I said? In Queen of the Underworld, I wanted to write a portrait of the artist as an ambitious young woman. I gave her my experience as a cub reporter on the Miami Herald, but she is much brassier and bolder than I was, and all the Cuban exiles she befriends are taken, piece by piece, from exile stories I have read and exiles from many countries whom I have known well.

Here I must say, as is the case with many writers, my characters are fully-imagined. Not one, even when I’m writing a fictional memory piece, ends up being myself. I think it would be hard to write a true portrait of yourself, even if you were trying your best to write an unadulterated autobiography. The storytelling impulse is just too strong. You start making it up. Clipping and tweaking. Elaborating. Adulterating.

Moe: Do you ever suffer from writer’s block? If yes, what measures do you take to get past it?

Gail Godwin: My writer’s block has never been of the “I… can’t… put… one word… in… front of… of…of…” variety. I can’t imagine that happening, unless I suffered a brain trauma or something. I have always needed to keep putting things down on paper, even if it’s about not being able to write whatever I had wanted to write. (I have an ongoing black notebook called “Unpublished Desperations, in which I rage and rail and vent the occasional malevolence on the villains and villainesses in my life… and have dialogues with the departed… and work out how certain incompatible phrases that come out of my dreams (a recent one was “Holy Viciousness”) can be made into a narrative, or a meditation, so I can understand it better.)

I have–too often–had another kind of block, a “stop this novel, I want to get off,” block. Sometimes I have reached 100 pages (and usually 100 pages is the “whew! It’s a novel!’ home-free point for me) and started sniffing dead manuscript in the room and have to get it out. A few of these poor things are in my archives at the Wilson Library at Chapel Hill: a novel called My Last Protege, being the longest. However, I was able to salvage the architect-heroine of that unfinished work: she became the best friend of Margaret Bonner, the priest in Evensong. And the first draft of a novel called The Villain, a part set in 1905, which died after 75 pages, later became a scene in The Odd Woman, set in the 1970′s when Jane, the heroine, is remembering a cautionary tale of her grandmother’s. So, if you can accept the “mulch” factor of writing, maybe nothing is lost.

Moe: What do you hope readers gain, feel or experience when they read one of your books for the first time?

Gail Godwin: I would hope they come away saying, as a young friend of mine said after she had finished an Iris Murdoch novel: “It had something for all the shelves of my mind!”

Moe: Can you share three things you’ve learned about the business of writing since your first publication?

Gail Godwin: That strikes a blank, I wonder why? About five years ago, I did paste a huge commandment on the ledge of the shelf above my computer. It’s in 50-point bold type and it says: YOU MAKE IT UP! Meaning: don’t research or fret, just ride full-tilt at what you don’t know you REALLY know and you’ll be fine.

Oh, here comes another one, this, a recent product as well. As I age, words don’t gush out of the faucet like they once did. The upside of this is that many of the faucet words were approximations and knockoffs. Now I open my trusty thesaurus and I slog until I find… THE ONE.

Moe: What kind of books do you like to read?

Gail Godwin: Any story, fictional or true, irresistibly written, about complex humans trying to be as conscious as they dare during the times and places into which they have been deposited by fate. Reading is my number one form of recreation–I have to have a book to read when I’m eating alone and one when I wake up at 3 in the morning. Just skimming off the top of recent reads and re-reads as the titles drop into my mind: The Diaries of Harold Nicholson, Margaret Atwood’s Cat’s Eye and Alias Grace, James’ Portrait of a Lady, Elizabeth Bowen’s Heat of the Day and The Death of the Heart, Ian McEwan’s Atonement, Max Frisch’s Montauk, Arthur Clarke’s Childhood’s End, Haruki Murakami’s The Wind-up Bird Chronicle, and Dickens’s David Copperfield.

Moe: When you’re not writing what do you do for fun?

Gail Godwin: When I’m not writing, or reading, I enjoy a walk at the nearby reservoir–about three miles of causeway with unrelieved beautiful water and land and clouds, and, recently, families of eagles. I like to draw with colored pencils, scenes from my imagination or past, also characters in works in progress (see Art Work on my web site). I like to sit very still and watch my young Siamese cats, twin brothers, Waldo and Zeb. They are the best show in town. I enjoy cooking and am good at it. And I love to sip drinks and then eat a good dinner with someone with a playful and curious and informed mind. That combination is rare, however.

Moe: New writers are always trying to glean advice from those with more experience. What suggestions do you have for new writers?

Gail Godwin: “Follow your hot wand,” as my witchy playwright/choreographer Madelyn Farley advocates–and practices–in Father Melancholy’s Daughter.

Moe: If you weren’t a writer what would you be?

Gail Godwin: Let’s see, one has to earn a living here. I would teach literature, not creative writing–I would assign books I could lecture on knowledgeably and entertainingly, and then I would also assign books none of us had read yet and we would spelunk our way through.

Moe: What is your favourite word?

Gail Godwin: Well, actually, it is probably something like repast or bedtime. But to be impressive, I will say imagination.

• Purchase Queen of the Underworld from Amazon.com.
• Purchase Queen of the Underworld from Amazon.ca.

My interview with Gail Godwin was originally published 4/8/2007 at Literary Fiction, BellaOnline.

Visit Gail Godwin’s official website.

Indu Sundaresan was born and raised in India. She came to the United States for graduate studies and has been a full-time writer for the last thirteen years. The Splendor of Silence is her third novel. She makes her home in the Seattle, Washington with her husband and daughter.

Moe: Looking back, did you choose the writing profession or did the profession choose you? When did you ‘know’ you were a writer?

Indu Sundaresan: When I was growing up in India, writing or becoming a writer was never really considered a true profession, merely a hobby (Medicine and Engineering were job worthy degrees!). Even though I wrote a short story and sent it in to a contest when I was in college, I never considered myself a writer, or thought this was what I would want to do. I did economics for my undergraduate degree, and came to the US for graduate school–I have graduate degrees in economics and operations research. When I finished graduate school, I decided, one day, to write a novel. So I bought a computer and wrote a novel. There was no fear involved in that decision, no sense that it was a big undertaking. Then I wrote another novel. And then, I wrote my first published novel and its sequel, The Twentieth Wife and The Feast of Roses. But I suppose like most writers who trudge through masses of rejections, I only knew I was a writer when I published The Twentieth Wife. Now, of course, I know better. I was a writer all along!

Moe: What inspires you?

Indu Sundaresan: What has inspired me so far is the lives of people from the past, and the excitement and thrill of being able to imagine and recreate a world for them to live in.

Moe: Every writer has a method to their writing. On a typical writing day, how would you spend your time?

Indu Sundaresan: I have no typical writing day–I suppose that is my method. Since my work typically involves a great deal of research, I spend a few months reading and making notes on what I think might find its way into my novels. And then, I will sit down to write the novel. I write at a steady stretch, with few breaks during the day and this goes on until I’m done with a first draft. I’ve sent in my work to my critique groups or to friends for comments before finishing my novels or discovering how the story comes together and always find myself struggling after that to finish because now, all of a sudden, I am back in editing mode, not a writing mode. I also do research while writing, of course–there is no way I could retain that much history and information in my head–but it’s now only to be able to write out a scene or a chapter.

Moe: How long does it take for you to complete a book you would allow someone to read? Do you write right through or do you revise as you go along?

Indu Sundaresan: I will edit my novel quite fast at first, until I think it is readable, and then I give it to my friends and ask them for comments, during which I go back to revise. When I get their feedback, I compare notes with what I’ve done since giving them the manuscript. Although I struggle when I get comments early on, before finishing the novel, I prefer to have editorial comments while the work is still malleable enough to be changed–that gives me fluidity with the work and allows me to see where even major changes need to be made.

Moe: When you sit down to write is any thought given to the genre or type of readers?

Indu Sundaresan: Yes, to some extent. The first write through is always just for myself, if I don’t like the voice of the novel, well, it won’t go anywhere. If I don’t like the sound of the narrative, I change it to something that is more musical–but whatever kind of animal the book turns out to be, in its very basic form, it is written to please my ear and my senses. All else, comes later in future edits.

Moe: When it comes to plotting, do you write freely or plan everything in advance?

Indu Sundaresan: I don’t plan everything in advance, but I do plan some strands of the storyline in advance, and these are usually subplots. I know they exist, I know how they play out and what will happen to a certain character, now all I need to do is weave these subplots into the main storyline. One example of this from my most recent novel, The Splendor of Silence, is what eventually happens to Kiran, Mila’s brother. The Splendor of Silence is a love story between Mila and Sam, and they are the main protagonists of the novel, but when I first began to write, their stories were still murky to me. Yet what Kiran, Mila’s older brother, has to go through, what role he was to play in Mila’s eventual decision about her love for Sam… all of this I knew before I had put down one word on paper.

I know I’m being a little obscure here about Kiran, but I do think that if I were to be more clear about his character in the novel, it would give away too much to someone who wants to read The Splendor of Silence—and when that revelation comes, it will be heartrending.

Moe: What kind of research do you do before and during a new book? Do you visit the places you write about?

Indu Sundaresan: I write a lot from memory, and I tend to set my novels in places I have already been to. So no, I don’t visit places in anticipation of writing a novel about them (in my experience that never works). I just travel to places because I am interested and while I am there, if there is a story in these old monuments and forts in India, then I will find it and make it my own. When I need to refresh my memory, there is, of course, no dearth of books I can read.

Moe: Where do your characters come from? How much of yourself and the people you know manifest into your characters?

Indu Sundaresan: Some of my characters come entirely from my imagination–in The Twentieth Wife and The Feast of Roses, both based on the life of an actual, extremely powerful empress, Mehrunnisa existed already in historical documents. Yet, because she was a woman who lived in a harem (she was Emperor Jahangir’ twentieth wife, hence the title of the first novel) and was veiled when in public, there is very little in the documents about her true character. So much of how she is in the two novels is how I imagined her to be, given the path her life took–the early marriage to a Persian soldier, an unhappy marriage with him, his death, her marriage to Emperor Jahangir at 34 years of age, her immense power for the next 17 years in a time when women were not meant to be seen or heard.

I do put some characteristics of people I know into my characters, but they are so diffused that I doubt anyone will recognize themselves.

Moe: Do you ever suffer from writer’s block? If yes, what measures do you take to get past it?

Indu Sundaresan: Yes, especially if I feel the novel is not going well (which I suppose IS writer’s block). When I get to this point, I write a lot of other stuff. I will take out all my writing workbooks and do exercises, I will read and write short stories, I will work on writing something, anything, every day until I feel that I can go back to the manuscript.

Moe: What do you hope readers gain, feel or experience when they read one of your books for the first time?

Indu Sundaresan: I like immersing myself in the place and the people. When a reader picks up my work, any of the three novels, I hope she will be so engrossed that she will not be able to put the book down until it’s done, and when she does, she will not forget details for a long time.

Moe: Can you share three things you’ve learned about the business of writing since your first publication?

Indu Sundaresan:
1. You are your book’s best asset.
2. There is no one else who knows your work as well as you do, and who should be able to talk about it as well as you can.
3. If you write a good book, people will talk about it and more people will read it, despite the publishing industry’s famous (or infamous?) shelf life for a book, sometimes a book will go well beyond everyone’s expectations. I’ve found this to be true, especially of The Twentieth Wife. I still hear from people who are reading the novel (it first came out in 2002), choosing it for a book club, inviting me to their book clubs and talking about my work.

Moe: What is your latest release about?

Indu Sundaresan: The Splendor of Silence is the story of a young American soldier named Sam Hawthorne, who comes to the princely state of Rudrakot in northwestern India (secretly) in search of his missing brother Mike, and while there, he falls in love with Mila Raman, the daughter of the local political agent. Mila is greatly attracted to Sam herself, but like him, she too carries secrets, and is forced eventually to decide between her love for Sam and her duty and loyalty to her father and her two brothers.

The Splendor of Silence opens twenty-one years later near Seattle, Washington, where Olivia, Sam’s and Mila’s daughter receives a trunk of treasures from India for her birthday. In that trunk, among the silk saris and the jewelry, is a thick letter from an unknown narrator which tells her the story of her parents’ love for each other–a story Olivia never heard from her father Sam.

The novel is set during four days in May of 1942 in the princely state of Rudrakot, a few years before Indian independence from British rule and amidst the chaos and upheaval of the second world war and the nationalist movement in India.

Moe: What kind of books do you like to read?

Indu Sundaresan: I read a lot of fiction, and some non-fiction.

Moe: When you’re not writing what do you do for fun?

Indu Sundaresan: I garden, knit, LOVE to cook and try out new recipes. But the most fun part of my day goes in looking after my daughter!

Moe: New writers are always trying to glean advice from those with more experience. What suggestions do you have for new writers?

Indu Sundaresan: Be persistent. There will be many rejections, and each time you get one, dust off your novel (or your short story, or query letter) and find another agent or magazine to send it out to. Then you can feel dejected for a while! But if your work is not out there, it will not get published. And, if it’s not very good, it will not get published–this happens to be true. So work on it until you do think it is perfect before sending it out, and then… revise again.

Moe: If you weren’t a writer what would you be?

Indu Sundaresan: I don’t know… a potter, a sculptor, a painter?

Moe: What is your favourite word?

Indu Sundaresan: Imagine.

• The Splendor of Silence: A Novel is available from Amazon.com.
• The Splendor of Silence: A Novel is available from Amazon.ca.

My interview with Indu Sundaresan was originally published 3/18/2007 at Literary Fiction, BellaOnline.

Visit Indu Sundaresan’s official website.

It’s funny but I feel akin to every woman named Maureen and often relish in any success they may achieve. This one is no different. At the moment Maureen O’Brien is celebrating the successful publication of her first novel, B-mother, with Harcourt Trade. Over the last 29 years she has written a lot of short stories and poems, some of which have appeared in literary anthologies. Currently, Maureen is teaching writing at the Greater Hartford Academy of Arts with future hopes of some day writing full time. She makes her home in Connecticut with her husband and two children. I hope you enjoy getting to know this fresh author.

Moe: Looking back, did you choose the writing profession or did the profession choose you? When did you ‘know’ you were a writer?

Maureen O’Brien: I believe it chose me. I’ve been very committed to my writing since I was in college. Writing is the way I process the world. I think I knew I was a writer when I realized I was willing to make sacrifices — like no job security and less money — in order to write.

Moe: What inspires you?

Maureen O’Brien: Listening to people talk about the truth of their lives.

Moe: Every writer has a method to their writing. On a typical writing day, how would you spend your time?

Maureen O’Brien: I write every day if possible. I try to set a goal each day I write. Usually that means becoming highly focused on the reality of one particular character within one particular scene. It means sitting very still until I can be right there with them, watching and listening.

Moe: How long does it take for you to complete a book you would allow someone to read? Do you write right through or do you revise as you go along?

Maureen O’Brien: The novel I just published, b-mother, took me four years. I revised chapters as I went along. But my new novel I am approaching differently, writing it all the way through and then I’ll go back. It’s a very energetic piece and I want to keep that energy high from start to finish. I want a full draft before I begin the line-by-line tinkering. The tinkering is my favourite part.

Moe: When you sit down to write is any thought given to the genre or type of readers?

Maureen O’Brien: My allegiance is to the characters, first and foremost. They lead me to the genre and the readers. I write the stories that I would want to read.

Moe: When it comes to plotting, do you write freely or plan everything in advance?

Maureen O’Brien: My new novel is more plotted, but I am of the belief –like so many writers — that plot comes from character. I’ve been putting individual scenes on Index cards and then laying them out to see the possibilities of story structure, to see how I can integrate back stories.

Moe: What kind of research do you do before and during a new book? Do you visit the places you write about?

Maureen O’Brien: I love the research because you search for resonant details from your character’s point of view. I am in love with the Internet, because you so easily find obscure facts and images you need to bring verisimilitude to the story. The first part of b-mother was set in a town I know very well. The last third of the novel was set in a town I discovered while driving up the coast of Maine; scouting locations where it seemed my character Hillary would land. I knew she needed to be near a post office and I found a view that fit her perfectly.

Moe: Where do your characters come from? How much of yourself and the people you know manifest into your characters?

Maureen O’Brien: My characters usually start out as composites of people I know (especially facial features, expressions, gestures, etc.), then morph into their own separate selves. Though in b-mother, Lola is a real person who gave me permission to use her as a character in the book. I am not a birthmother, but Hillary grew from certain aspects of my own personality, a more wounded side. I’ve given my new character Grace a lot of my own quirks, beliefs, struggles, and sensibilities.

Moe: Do you ever suffer from writer’s block? If yes, what measures do you take to get past it?

Maureen O’Brien: When I am resistant to writing I try to go back to the basics of timed free writes. Write as fast as I can, whatever comes to mind, for 12 minutes, that sort of thing. I also put on loud music to drown out my thoughts so I can write.

Moe: What do you hope readers gain, feel or experience when they read your book for the first time?

Maureen O’Brien: The bottom line is I want my readers to enter the story and feel satisfied by the telling of it, to enter the world of my characters, and merge with them while they read. I cried a lot when I wrote b-mother and when readers tell me they cried while reading it, it’s gratifying to know the words can create physical reactions like tears.

Moe: Can you share three things you’ve learned about the business of writing since your first publication?

Maureen O’Brien: Having an agent who loves your work is essential. It’s a hard-hitting competitive business and your agent is your advocate. And even though it’s a business, I have crossed paths with passionate, intelligent women who have enriched my life — editors, my agent and her assistant, my publicist, independent bookstore owners. Also, I’ve learned that there are a lot of writers on-line who are willing to share information of publishing; people are pretty generous.

Moe: What is your latest release about?

Maureen O’Brien: My novel is about a family hit by loss, and how they heal over 25 years. My narrator first came to me ten years ago. I was crossing at a light in a group of pregnant teens from a home for unwed mothers. A man in a car at the light was gawking rudely. One of the girls with a very big belly confronted him, shouting, “You wanna take a picture?” Hillary began to form in my mind right then.

Moe: When you’re not writing what do you do for fun?

Maureen O’Brien: I love yoga; I love to walk.

Moe: New writers are always trying to glean advice from those with more experience. What suggestions do you have for new writers?

Maureen O’Brien: Rejection can be very hard, to the point of being debilitating. You have to be deeply defiant sometimes and just keep writing.

Moe: If you weren’t a writer what would you be?

Maureen O’Brien: Some job where I could be on a lot of land, with animals

Moe: What is your favourite word?

Maureen O’Brien: I’ve always thought “Shenandoah” was a beautiful word, but I’ve never seen the river.

• B-mother is available from Amazon.com.
• B- mother is available from Amazon.ca.

My interview with Maureen O’Brien was originally published 2/23/2007 at Literary Fiction, BellaOnline.

Nestled on the west coast of British Columbia in Salt Spring Island lives writer, Kathy Page with her family. Page has been writing professionally for twenty years. She also teaches writing one day a week, does the occasional workshop and one-on-one mentoring when the opportunity arises. She has written seven books with a lot of short fiction in between. The Story of My Face was long-listed for the Orange Prize (one of my favourites) in 2002. When she’s not busy writing or teaching she’s otherwise occupied with her husband and their two children, aged seven and ten. Please enjoy getting to know Kathy Page.

Moe: Looking back, did you choose the writing profession or did the profession choose you? When did you ‘know’ you were a writer?

Kathy Page: I had always written. I regularly won writing contests as a child and teenager, and yet it was just something I did: I never thought of becoming a writer until the first novel I wrote was accepted for publication. At the same time, though, it’s true to say that I had avoided becoming anything else. I think writing is both a craft and a vocation. A privilege too – though I am still sometimes ambivalent about it, and have periodically tried to escape and do something different.

Moe: What inspires you?

Kathy Page: Change. The intricacies of our lives; the extraordinary situations people find themselves in, how they make sense of them, what they’re driven to do and what becomes of them as a result. I’m drawn to imagine and explore lives very different to my own.

Moe: Every writer has a method to their writing. On a typical writing day, how would you spend your time?

Kathy Page: On an ideal day, I go first thing to the cabin I have in the woods, light the fire if needs be, then walk for an hour. Then I work for several hours. I re-read what I have recently written, and then push ahead further. I have no phone or internet in the cabin, so I do internet research and answer emails when I return to the house in the afternoon. Many days, of course, are not ideal. I have small children, so things crop up and writing can get squeezed. But I try to keep up a regular rhythm of work.

Moe: How long does it take for you to complete a book you would allow someone to read? Do you write right through or do you revise as you go along?

Kathy Page: It takes a minimum of two years to get the work ready for a publisher, though I do have friends I will share early work with. Having said that, how long a book takes is actually quite hard to quantify. They often incubate for long periods of time before I begin writing, and while that’s happening I might be spending a fair bit of time on research, taking notes or just meditating on the possible story. And sometimes there is a break in the writing process. For example, I worked on Alphabet for almost a year, and then abandoned it because I knew something was not working but couldn’t see what it was or how to progress. Ten years later, clearing out my London office for the move to Canada, I picked up the old, forgotten manuscript, and knew exactly what it needed; it took another eighteen months or so, and needed only a little editing.

I tend to revise as I go along, but I try to fight that tendency! Writing straight through has many advantages, not the least being the sense of accomplishment and certainty that comes at having a first draft, something to work with.

Moe: When you sit down to write is any thought given to the genre or type of readers?

Kathy Page: I didn’t think about this very much when I started out – I did what I did instinctively. But since then, I have certainly asked myself what I’m doing and who it is for. I aim to enrich and open up the world by providing an imaginative experience, and I do want to reach as many readers as I can. My work is fundamentally optimistic, but since I’m drawn to strange and serious subjects, and since I occasionally I want to take the reader where he or she might not want to go if asked point blank, I feel it’s important to entertain as I go along. It’s fun too, to play with genre, and in my recent novels, I’ve enjoyed combining the pleasures of a suspenseful plot with a thought-provoking story.

Moe: When it comes to plotting, do you write freely or plan everything in advance?

Kathy Page: I began as a ‘freefaller’, writing to find out who the characters were and what the story was (this approach is wonderfully described by Joan Didion in her essay Why I Write). Nowadays, I plan in advance, but quite loosely. It does save some wasted effort, though I find the characters rarely do exactly what I’ve planned for them (which is only natural, since they only become ‘real’ as you write them). I revise the outline as I progress. For me, there is a tension between planning and discovery; I want a workable balance between the two.

Moe: What kind of research do you do before and during a new book? Do you visit the places you write about?

Kathy Page: This depends on the book, but I generally do a great deal of research. Alphabet was based on my own experience, working for a year as a writer in residence in a men’s prison in the UK. I had extensive notes of my time there, and had read widely about the psychology of crime, but I still found that I had to do a great deal of finding out – which was challenging from the other side of the Atlantic. I need both broad, big picture research to give me a sense of context, and minute, concrete detail to make the settings come alive. I do visit anywhere that is going to be significant in the story, and when I do so I often find a person who I can email later if there is something I didn’t notice or have forgotten.

I often invent places, but then again I always base them on real ones, so even this doesn’t free me from research. I continue researching even as I write, so my reading pile can be themed for years at a time, which is something of a joke in the family. Researching like this is very time consuming but I really enjoy it and it often throws up new ideas and bits of storyline.

Moe: Where do your characters come from? How much of yourself and the people you know manifest into your characters?

Kathy Page: How characters arrive can be quite mysterious. Sometimes they arrive more or less fully fledged, as did Natalie, from the The Story of My Face; other times I create them deliberately. In Alphabet, the main character was inspired by several people I had met, blended them together into one unrecognisable person. I am often inspired by real people but normally what appears in the book will be some aspect of them, not the whole person.

I think the way I appear is indirect – in making the character, I draw on and magnify some part of me that is like them, however small it might be, rather as an actor does.

Moe: Do you ever suffer from writer’s block? If yes, what measures do you take to get past it?

Kathy Page: Yes, I have, but I think it was a general life block rather than just writing! I was depressed and lots of things lost their appeal. What worked was making some quite drastic changes in my life, plus taking up running. While all this went on, I left the door open to writing without insisting on it.

Moe: What do you hope readers gain, feel or experience when they read one of your books for the first time?

Kathy Page: Moved. A heightened awareness of the rich complicatedness of life; a connection to other people (the characters in the book), even though they may be very different to themselves.

Moe: Can you share three things you’ve learned about the business of writing since your first publication?

Kathy Page: Like it or not, publicity is dreadfully important.

Persistence – of vision, and in the face of adversity – is as important as talent because writing, as a business, is a rather brutal one.

Feeling that one has connected with readers is hugely rewarding.

Moe: What is your latest release about?

Kathy Page: Alphabet is the story of Simon Austen, a young man in a high security prison who learns to read and write and then begins, illicitly, to write letters to a series of women outside the prison. His motives are quite murky and he thinks he is the one calling the shots in these long distance relationships, but he’s wrong about that. He is on an unstoppable journey, opened up to all the perils of communication, to choices about honesty, moral decisions and so on – all the kinds of interaction that he once wanted to avoid.

Simon Austen is a very complex character: charming, intelligent, but also damaged and capable of brutality. Many of his strengths are also weaknesses, and vice versa. Both character and story were inspired by the time I spent working as a writer in residence in men’s prison in the UK. I was fascinated by the whole question of change. Do people change? How drastic can that change be? I set out to imagine that process for Simon.

Moe: What kind of books do you like to read?

Kathy Page: I like fiction that is well crafted, with a strong emotional core. I like to read about places and lives that are foreign to mine.

Moe: When you’re not writing what do you do for fun?

Kathy Page: Spend time with my husband and children, garden, swim, cycle, read, go to theatre performances; I really love drama.

Moe: New writers are always trying to glean advice from those with more experience. What suggestions do you have for new writers?

Kathy Page: It takes a long time, and you never stop learning how to do it.

Moe: If you weren’t a writer what would you be?

Kathy Page: It is hard to imagine but it would have to involve communication in some way.

Moe: What is your favourite word?

Kathy Page: I’m sorry, I like them all.

• The Story of My Face from Amazon.com
• Alphabet from Amazon.ca

My interview with Kathy Page was originally published 10/16/2006 at Literary Fiction, BellaOnline.

Visit Kathy Page’s official website.