News! Forgive Me, I Meant to Do It<\/i> is getting a lovely short review in The New York Times<\/i> Book Review this coming Sunday, March 11th. I\u2019m so happy! It will be great for the book.<\/p>\n
Last week I overlooked this question from Charlotte about the Fairies<\/i> books: Can fairies die of old age, or just disbelief\/hawks\/drowning\/etc.?<\/i><\/p>\n
In my idea of it these fairies don\u2019t age. If disbelief, hawks, drowning, and so forth don\u2019t get them they can go on forever. The fairies in Ella Enchanted<\/i>, on the other hand, do age, but slowly. I never had to imagine fairy death in Ella\u2019s world but I guess they can die of old age, probably not of disease – they would be able to cure themselves with unicorn-hair soup or something else. The fairies in The Two Princesses of Bamarre<\/i> are probably immortal and probably never seem to get older, since they’re whirls of light, although I can\u2019t be sure because the problem didn\u2019t come up so I didn\u2019t have to decide.<\/p>\n
Next question, this one from Elizabeth: ….how long did it take you to write Writing Magic<\/u>? It seems like it wouldn’t have taken very long, because you have so much writing advice stored up, but you never know!<\/i><\/p>\n
You\u2019re right. Writing Magic<\/i> grew out of my writing workshops. The narrative was sitting in my head and the exercises were in my workshop notes. When I wrote, it all came pouring out, took about six months, which is quick for me. The publication was delayed, however, because the people at HarperCollins felt they could launch the book more successfully if they paired it with my next novel, which was Fairest<\/i>, and that was not quick! The dual publication allowed me to tour for both books, whereas HarperCollins generally tours me only for my novels. And Writing Magic<\/i> has found lots of readers and writers – oh, joy!<\/p>\n
As I\u2019ve mentioned here before, my editor and I are thinking about a second writing book, this one based on the blog, which should go quickly too, as it will be more of an assembly job and deciding which blog posts are worthy and which aren\u2019t.<\/p>\n
Back to Charlotte, who had more questions:<\/p>\n
I was going to ask which is your favourite, but I think you’ve already said it’s Dave at Night<\/u>. What’s your second favourite?<\/i><\/p>\n
There are contenders for second place: Writing Magic, Ever, Ella Enchanted, The Princess Tales<\/i>, especially Princess Sonora and the Long Sleep<\/i> and For Biddle\u2019s Sake<\/i>. The Princess Tales<\/i> don\u2019t come up often here, but I\u2019m very proud of them because they\u2019re funny, and I love humor and I laughed my way through writing them.<\/p>\n
And: How do you start a book? Like, do you have a bunch of tentative ideas and when you finish one you start working on another? And when do you tell your publisher what you’re doing? (You said you have x amount of time to finish Beloved Elodie<\/u>, right? So there’s contracty stuff already?)<\/i><\/p>\n
After I finish a book I give myself a little break, a few weeks generally. When I finish Beloved Elodie<\/i> I plan to start excavating the pile of I-no-longer-know-what on my desk and cleaning out the closet downstairs where the ruined boots of winters past have collected. If I\u2019m going to do the writing book next that will be easy to jump into, but when I start my next novel, yes, I will look over my list of idea notes. I hope the novel will be a third Elodie book, so I\u2019ll be hunting for an idea I can frame as a mystery. If I don\u2019t see anything in my notes that appeals to me, I\u2019ll let my mind wander and take notes on anything it brings back. I may read a mystery or two. Often I reread fairy tales in my home collection. As I go along I write more notes. The ideas that appeal to me generate more musing and more writing than the others. Eventually I find most of my speculation settling on one big idea. The next thing that happens is that a beginning swims up to me. And I\u2019m off.<\/p>\n
There\u2019s no set time when I tell my editor what I\u2019m doing. I don\u2019t make a secret of it. The contracty stuff specifies only that the book has to be fantasy, and of course it has to be a novel for kids. Rosemary (my editor) doesn\u2019t have to approve my idea. Naturally, if I tell her and she spots a problem I want to know about it. For example, at one point I was considering extending a short story I wrote several years ago into a novel. I told her and she said there was a glut of dystopian books. What I had in mind was more utopian than dys, but I couldn\u2019t figure out where I wanted to take the story. If I had worked it out (or if I do in the future) I would have had another conversation with her. After I explained what I wanted to do, if she thought it was still dystopian I might have held off on the idea until the dystopian craze faded. <\/p>\n
And: Which is the more agonizing first draft–Two Princesses of Bamarre<\/u> or Beloved Elodie<\/u>? Or another one?<\/i><\/p>\n
There are three contenders, the two you named and Fairest. Fairest<\/i> might have been the worst. I couldn\u2019t get the POV right. I thought I wouldn\u2019t be able to write from Aza\u2019s perspective because she\u2019d be in a coma, so I tried it from the gnome zhamM\u2019s, Prince Ijori\u2019s, and third-person omniscient, and I wrote about 300 pages in each before realizing it wasn\u2019t working. Finally I figured out the coma and I was able to have Aza tell her own story. I was able to use some of the 900 pages, but I had to recast everything.<\/p>\n
On the other hand, whatever book I\u2019m working seems toughest because the struggle is uppermost in my consciousness. Past pain fades.<\/p>\n
On the third hand (hah!), each of these miserable books had its own delights too. In Two Princesses<\/i> I loved fooling the reader with the specters and I loved writing the epic poem fragments. In Fairest <\/i>writing the songs was a joy. In Beloved Elodie<\/i> my favorite part is switching POVs chapter by chapter and finding voices for the four different speakers. Masteress Meenore\u2019s dry voice is the most fun to write. And figuring out the mystery is fascinating, plus there\u2019s some reader fooling here too.<\/p>\n
And: Before you published Ella<\/u>, were you feeling a bit lost, like you might not ever get published? Did you get that “why am I wasting my time on this?” feeling? The one where everyone looks at you funny because you’re the only person you know who’s writing a book on top of everything else?<\/i><\/p>\n
Yeah, at around the nine-year mark I did get discouraged and thought of quitting. I don\u2019t know how much longer I would have kept going, but then I got lucky and Harper accepted Ella<\/i>. It\u2019s even harder to get published today, I believe, when no publishers I know of look at unsolicited work. And yet people break in all the time. There\u2019s hope, but writing and publishing both call for reserves of patience.<\/p>\n
More questions from Charlotte and others next week.<\/p>\n
Here are three prompts:<\/p>\n
\u2022 Fairies are absent from many fairy tales, like “Snow White” and “Rumpelstiltskin.” In some, however, they\u2019re critical, like \u201cCinderella,\u201d \u201cSleeping Beauty,\u201d and \u201cToads and Diamonds.\u201d Pick one of these tales with fairies and imagine a back story that causes the fairy or fairies to care about the plight of these particular humans. Invent your own species of fairies and write a back story scene or an entire novel in which the known fairy tale is only a small part of the action.<\/p>\n
\u2022 Imagine that Cinderella\u2019s stepsisters have their own fairy godmothers. Rewrite the fairy tale and get these new fairies involved. What happens to them and to Cinderella? Heck, you can give everyone a fairy godmother: the stepmother, Cinderella\u2019s father, the prince.<\/p>\n
\u2022 Speaking of beginnings, see what you can do with this (you can change any of it): Once upon a time a girl saw a dryad slip out of a tree. The tree was oak. The girl was eleven and her eleven-year-old beagle had just died.<\/i><\/p>\n
Have fun, and save what you write!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
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