Q: Where do you do your best pre-writing or book planning or plotting?
A: For me, a book usually starts off as a single idea. That idea might be anything from “A person who makes up prophecies needs to make one of them come true” to “there’s this giant windmill…”. When I get one of those ideas, I write it on whatever scrap of papers is closest at hand, and stuff it in my pocket or my purse. Then I go on about my life, until another idea hits. I write that down, etc. My husband brings me sad little wads of paper that have been laundered because I left them in my jeans. I start to not be able to find my keys amid the sea of paper in my purse.
Eventually, I realize that some of the ideas fit together. Then I collect all the non-laundered bits of paper and type everything into a brainstorming document on my computer. A lot of times, that makes me think of even more tidbits, and suddenly I have the skeleton of a story. I continue to scribble on odd bits of paper when I think of new ideas. Sometimes I just re-write everything to see if I can jar any new ideas loose.
After enough of that, my brainstorming document has turned into a plot outline and character notes. I’m still not ready to start the real writing yet. This is the most dangerous time for me, because I have a habit of trying to start writing before the character notes have turned into real people. The process by which that happens is the most mysterious of all to me, and it is the thing I find myself least able to control. I drift around, doing my daily tasks, with the back part of my brain churning away, trying to find the characters who will live in my book. I drink a lot of tea, babble a lot to my husband, and take a lot of hot baths. If I am lucky, one day my main character walks on stage as if she or he has always been there, and says “So, aren’t you going to start?”
Once that happens, I can begin the actual writing.
Q: How long does it take you to write a book?
A: After the “pre-writing” I describe above is done, I can usually write about 1000 to 2000 words a day on the actual book. For a 60,000 word book, that’s about two months. I wrote the first draft of Fortune’s Folly in 36 days. Of course that’s just a first draft. After that, I usually take a few weeks (or more) off to get some distance from it. Then I do a revision (or two), sprucing it up so it is ready for other folks to read.
Depending on my timeline, it may go to some of my critique partners, or to my agent. After I hear back from them, I revise again. And sometimes again. That whole process can take a year or more, depending on how many other things I am doing. Each revision, however, probably takes me about a month, working a few hours most days. Eventually, a draft will go to my editor, and get revised some more.
For Fortune’s Folly, I did one significant revision for my wise and wonderful editor in which I did things like re-writing the ending and one “line-edit” revision in which I did things like removing word repetition.
To sum that all up: writing a single draft usually takes me about 2 months of steady work. All the rest of it takes a lot longer. It’s also important to remember that every writer works differently. I have friends who take longer to produce their rough drafts, but they often don’t need to do as much revision as I do. It’s also important to remember that every book is different. I would not be surprised (now that I’ve posted this!) if my next draft takes me six months to produce!
Q: How long did it take you to get your book published?
A: I wrote the first draft of Fortune’s Folly in the fall of 2003. I wrote it as a sort of “break” while I was in the middle of trying to write a big, serious, Ancient-Greece-inspired fantasy epic. After I finished the draft of Fortune’s Folly, I kind of tossed it aside and went back to the epic. By 2005 I had realized that the epic wasn’t working, so I took another look at Fortune’s Folly. And I liked it, even if the beginning was awful. I really liked Fortunata and I was excited by her story. So I revised it, which involved (among other things) writing about four different new first chapters. In early 2006 I sent out queries to agents, and for the first time I started getting “positive rejections”. Instead of getting no response, or getting a form letter, I got requests to see more. And even when the agents rejected the book (which they all did), a few of them said nice things about it. They also told me what wasn’t working (the prince was too dull). So I went back for another revision.
My next round of (email) queries went out on Jan 1, 2007 8:13 PM. I was still sitting at the computer when a reply popped up at 8:18. I was sure it was a “failed to deliver message”, or some sort of automated response. But when I opened the email, I found it was, in fact, a request for the first three chapters! I sent them off, and by the beginning of February I had signed on with my agent. She sent out the manuscript a few days after that. On March 14th we had the deal settled. I think I probably clicked on my email inbox about a gazillion times that month! And it was all done via email. I actually have never spoken with my editor or my agent on the phone, although I did make a trip to NYC to meet both of them in person.
As with everything else, though, the publishing world is unpredictable. My sale happened really fast. Other deals have happened faster. Others have taken longer. I am glad for the sake of my nerves that things moved quickly for me, but I fully expect that future sales might take considerably longer.
Q: What were some of your favorite books, growing up?
A: I particularly loved (and still love!) L.M. Montgomery’s Anne of Green Gables series, Laura Ingles Wilder’s Little House books, the Mrs Piggle-Wiggle books by Betty MacDonald, the All-of-a-Kind Family books by Sidney Taylor, the Betsy-Tacy books by Maud Hart Lovelace, the Ramona books by Beverly Cleary, Susan Cooper’s The Dark is Rising series, Lloyd Alexander’s Chronicles of Prydain, Dragonsong and Dragonsinger by Anne McCaffery, The Blue Sword and The Hero and the Crown by Robin McKinley, C.S.Lewis’s Chronicles of Narnia, Dogsbody and Witch Week by Diana Wynne Jones, So You Want to be a Wizard? and Deep Wizardry by Diane Duane, and The Darkangel by Meredith Ann Pierce.
Q: Do you associate yourself or other people with your characters?
A: No, not really. Almost the reverse, in fact! It sometimes helps me to figure out my characters if I sit down and think about how they are different from me. For example, I would never be able to tell false fortunes like Fortunata, because I would be too nervous and worried about getting into trouble! Fortunata is braver than I am!
I’ve also tried to look at pictures and find actors or models who “look like” my characters, but I’ve never actually found a match. I know a lot of other writers who do that and it works really well for them, but I guess my brain just doesn’t make those connections in the same way.
Q: Are there certain places or times (of day or year) that you do your best writing?
A: I am a morning person, so I prefer to do most of my writing before 10 AM. I adore early summer mornings, with the riot of bird chatter and the sun rising before 5. Spring can be a difficult time for me though, because I also love to garden and it’s always very tempting to go out and putter with flowers, rather than puttering with the words.
Winter can be hard all around, in a creaky old house in a northern state. But I recently got some great fingerless gloves, and my little electric space heater warms my office up nicely. And there’s always plentiful hot tea on hand when I am writing.
I also have a fondness for writing during the day when it’s raining out. I associate gray rainy days with curling up inside and reading a good book (not to mention playing hide-and-seek and finding Narnia) so I think it fires up my imagination.