Books

Ysabeau Wilce has written one novel for young adults–Flora Segunda: Being the Magickal Mishaps of a Girl of Spirit, Her Glass-Gazing Sidekick, Two Ominous Butlers (One Blue), a House with Eleven Thousand Rooms, and a Red Dog–and a host of fabulous short stories. She’s currently hard at work on a sequel to Flora, as you’ll find out. Her dog Bothwell is a cutie-pie. She, basically, is awesome.

GB: Okay, the first question I always ask is about process. What’s your process like when you’re working on a novel? (You can start anywhere you like, getting the idea, actually beginning to write, trapped beneath a deadline, etcetera.)

YW: Um…process of writing. First, I drink coffee and cry about how I can never think of anything to write about. Then some magick first sentence drops like magick into my over-caffeinated brain and I sit down at the ole thinkpad and start typing frantically. At some point I run out of steam, coffee and inspiration, and then start back up with the crying again. More coffee. Time passes. Process repeats. If I have something to write about I can churn a whole lotta words out in a short time. Deadlines are good–they do tend to focus attention marvelously, but when the Well of Creativity is dry, or the Muse is off canoodling with other writers (that hussy!), then all the deadlines in the world won’t provide focus. Every once and a while, I’ll print what I’ve got so far, and do a small edit–when I’m stuck sometimes this shakes stuff loose–but I never do any major rewrites until the book is completely finished. And then I need some time between finishing and rewrite to process things, and maybe consider new things, and get some distance. I always assume each book/short story/whatever will be the last. Maybe the Muse won’t come back next time–maybe she loves somebody else better than me now…who knows…So far she has always sashayed back–but it’s best not to take her for granted! I’m sure she wouldn’t like that at all!

GB: One of the things I loved best about Flora Segunda was the sense of Califa’s history that infuses it–the way layers of the past keep resurfacing and affecting Flora in the story’s present. There’s a real sense that the history is alive, is changing and shifting, just like real history does depending when and who is seeing/telling it. You’re a historian too, so how did you go about constructing such a rich fictional history?

YW: I let my subconscious do it. All the history in Califa grows from the characters–the characters act in certain ways because things have happened to them, and as I learn more about them, the more these events come clear. Sometimes I do sit back and try to figure something out–I’ll think, hmmm where does Califa get its canned food from, or hmmm what about salt?…and then try to come up with an answer, which may or may not make it into a story. But I like to know these things. Economies and infrastructures are often overlooked in created worlds, and it drives me batty when Fantasylands have no obvious GDPs or manufacturing bases. (Which is a bit of a joke, really, because although my husband is an economist, in real life I never understand any economic stuff at all!)

GB: Flora also makes rich use of language, particularly in developing its own slang and patois. This is tied into the history question somewhat, because it too helps create a very fully realized world for Flora and company to inhabit. Did this come naturally as you were writing or did you put some time in before deciding how the characters would speak? Do you think language is an underused tool in fantasy writing?

YW: For the most part it comes naturally. Years of interest in language and words has given me a pretty big vocabulary, which comes out full force when I write. Though I am not musical by nature, I strive for a lyrical quality to my writing. Like Shakespeare, most of my stories are (oddly enough) meant to be read out-loud, and I do so to myself when I’m editing, making sure there are no clunky words to spoil the rhythm and flow. I do think that language is often underused or misused in fantasy writing. Misused when people who are not linguists try to make up languages–Tolkien got away with this because he was a professional, a man steeped in language who understood the rules of linguistics, and therefore was able to create a language that sounded like a language. Without that understanding, made-up languages just sound silly. Language is underused when fantasy (particularly commodity fantasy) becomes a tautology–a circular argument that refers only to itself, over and over again–using the same words/plots/characters endlessly. These fantasies influenced only by each other and their vocabulary is dead. That said, there are many fantasy writers that use language wonderfully: Gene Wolfe; John Crowley; Delia Sherman; Stephen King; Clark Ashton Smith; Jon Armstrong; Paul Witcover–to name just a few. Anyway, English is a vast and briny deep–why stay in the shallows? Sometimes I will need a better word than the normal one, and then I whip out the trusty Roget’s Thesaurus, which usually never fails me. If I’m really stumped I will cruise the pages of The Oxford English Dictionary or Partridge’s Dictionary of Slang, and there usually find what I’m looking for.

GB: You’ve also written a number of short stories. How is writing a story different for you than a novel, besides the obvious difference of length?

YW: The process is the same, except that I cry when I have to stop long before I’m actually done! Short stories are not my medium. I’m mostly interested in characterization and it’s hard to have both characterization and action in the same story and keep to your word count. Of course, some writers can do so wonderfully–but it’s a skill that I don’t have. I recently wrote a short story to word count and deadline, and found it an interesting experience. Novelists can be self-indulgent, but short story writers must economize. Learning economy is good, but sometimes you have to be lavish!

GB: Just a couple of teeny, teeny hints about what’s going to happen in the sequel? PUH-LEEZE with sugar and lemon on top?

YW: Hm…How can I resist such a sweet-and-sour plea? I suggest (but do not guarentee) that FLORA REDUX will contain: Loud rock bands. Revolutionary riots. Secret passages. Attacking tentacles. Many chores. Flynn. Oubliettes. A demonic bouncer. Magickal vortices. Udo’s new hat. A Bear Headed Girl. A shootout. A horsecar shaped like a dragon. An amusement park that turns dangerous after dark. The Huitzil Ambassador. Bugles. A hedge maze Tomb. The Warlord’s Birthday Party. An indoor snowstorm. Phosphorescent bullets. A Dæmon from the Abyss. Sneaking. A swan boat. Glamorous disguises. Bullies. The Perfume of Invisibility. Magickal sigils. A Plushy Pink Pig With Very Sharp Teeth. Waffles.

If the creeks don’t rise, FLORA REDUX will be out Spring of 2008.

GB: What are some books you’ve been loving lately?

YW: Well, I just finished Generation Loss by Elizabeth Hand, which I adored. No other writer so brilliant captures the Artist’s longing for the Vision and the Void. I’m almost done with The Privilege of the Sword, Ellen Kushner’s neo-swashbuckler; a delightful book that contains many of the things I love best in the world: swords, cross-dressing, Tormented Boys, witty repartee, and close attention to culinary detail. After hearing Delia Sherman read from Changeling at Wiscon, I rushed to the dealer’s room and scored the last copy at the con–a wonderful romp through a mythologically infested New York, where the Wild Hunt rides through Central Park; The Great White Way is truly a Great White Way, inhabited by Runyonesque gryphons and chorus-lines; and a dragon guards the gold of Wall Street. I’m also currently rereading Archer in Hollywood by Ross MacDonald–a three novel anthology of the best cases of MacDonald’s hard-boiled detective Lew Archer. MacDonald is an writer of great economy, with a perfect eye for detail, and though his novels are often considered pulpy, I think he’s a fabulously economical stylist.

Visit today’s other SBBT sites:

Tim Tharp at Chasing Ray
Justina Chen Headley at Big A, little a
Dana Reinhardt at Bildungsroman
Julie Ann Peters at Finding Wonderland
Cecil Castellucci at A Chair, A Fireplace & A Tea Cozy
Bennett Madison at Bookshelves of Doom
Holly Black at Seven Impossible Things Before Breakfast
Justine Larbalestier at Hip Writer Mama
Kirsten Miller at A Fuse #8 Production

Cecil Castellucci has written three novels for young adults–Boy Proof, The Queen of Cool, and Beige–in addition to a brand-new graphic novel, The Plain Janes, that launched DC’s Minx imprint aimed at teenage girls. She’s also a musician, a filmmaker, the creator of I Heart YA, and a bunch of other stuff I’m forgetting, but she’ll say more about in a minute. Cecil is awesome, basically.

GB: First question is always process porn for the writers out there, so tell me about how you write. You can start at whatever part of the process you want–when an idea occurs to you, when you actually start writing, when the deadline’s looming, outlining/not outlining, etcetera. (Note to astute readers deux: I changed the wording just enough to make sure you’re on your toes.)

CC: Well. I get a lot of ideas, but most of them are crap. Or they are used up just by saying something like, "Hey, I want to write a book about a field trip!" That’s it. That is crap. I know that I am going to really write something when in a flash, like Athena  bursting out of the head of Zeus, I know the beginning and end of a book. It is very exciting. It’s like the story, the characters, the voice, just bubble up inside of me. Then I live with it. Sort of walking around, like I’m in love, day dreaming, and always kind of pulling the strings together, weaving. Actually, you know how Sabriel does the magic in Garth Nix’s Sabriel? That is exactly the way that it feels when I am writing a story. Or composing it in my head. I like knowing the end, because that is like my  north star to aim for. Then, once I know that I am really going to write something, I love a deadline. I give them to myself. Or I tell everyone that I’m doing this by this date, I say it out loud, and tell everyone, so I’ll look like an ass if I don’t actually do it. (With my performance pieces, I often just book a date in a theater and then tell everyone I am doing a show and then have to come up with something.) I also always ask my editors to give me deadlines.   

GB: You’re one of those despicably multi-talented types–filmmaker, musician, writer of plays, novels and graphic novels. Are these completely separate types of work for you or do they inform each other and in what ways?

CC: They totally inform each other! I think the nice thing about having so many different types of ways to tell stories or things that I do is that I don’t feel like I have to cram every idea I have or everything I want to say about the WORLD and STUFF and MY HEART into one thing. I can really work on what’s best for that particular story and not be precious about anything. It all keeps and gets put to use in other ways. Also, I think that the different forms of telling stories is good because you have to approach the story in a different way to adapt it to that medium. So hopefully it makes my brain able to see new roads in each medium. I mean, I think it’s a life long craftsman kind of thing. You know, I just keep learning. 

GB: What is the secret artform you are a master of that I left off the list? (!)

CC: Crepe maker. Chocolate chip cookie baker. Cheerleader for other people’s creative projects.

GB: Let’s do the time warp, backward. When’s the first time you remember thinking that you either wanted to be or were a writer?

CC: My mom tells this story of finding me crouched in front of the television at 4 years old watching PBS which was showing The Trojan Women in ancient greek. I was weeping and I told my mom it was the best thing I’d ever seen on TV. I think probably a seed was planted that day. (Thank you, Euripides!) I also at that time became obsessed with Verdi’s La Traviata and Puccini’s Madame Butterfly. I was uninterested in playing kickball with the kids on my street. I wanted to play Greek Tragedy and Opera. This was not popular with them. Then I saw Star Wars. When that Darth Vader went spinning off at the end of the movie and I understood that there was going to be another movie, I understood that someone was going to make that story up. I wanted that person to me. 

GB: One of the things I love about your work is the range in your protagonists to date. There’s a huge difference between Egg, say, and Katy in the new book, Beige. In fact, Katy’s not a character I see a lot of in YA fiction; we don’t get a whole lot of the superior priss type from the inside out in a sympathetic way–did you know right from the start that you wanted to deal with a character like that in contrast to the more chaotic punk scene? Also, how hard was it to write a character who believes she doesn’t like music?

CC: Oh, thanks!  I didn’t want to write the same character over and over again! That said, I think all my characters have some similar elements to them. I did know right away that I wanted to write a character who was observing the scene rather than in the punk scene. It seemed to me that it would have been a lot easier to write BEIGE from the pov of Lake. Or Queen of Cool from the point of view of Tina. But with music, I thought it would be interesting to write from a character that I couldn’t understand and whose world view and dislike of music I was uncomfortable with. In a way, she is kin to Egg. Egg is just as closed off. 

And it was incredibly hard to write Katy. She was very withholding and because she didn’t come easy to me I was quite frustrated. But I really wanted to tell her story. But the whole music thing was very difficult. I think it made me like music even more that I do. Because the absence of it in her made it all that much more important to me.

GB: A major theme in The Plain Janes is the joy and power behind art for art’s sake. This is actually a thread I think that shows up in your work quite a bit–and seems to be the way you live your life too, creating things and spreading happiness and energy. I know this isn’t truly a question, but can you say a little bit about that and maybe any thoughts on how life and writing amplify each other?

CC: Yeah! I guess it is a truly important thing to me! I mean, I pretty much see everything as artistic. Also, I like happiness! And I like when people are happy! Hopefully my little stories make people really think about the things that they really like. And make them proud to like what they like. And to be happy as clams that they are who they are! And if they are not! To go out and be who they are! I think that creating things and being creative in my work is just part and parcel of the same thing, the characters are all trying to move through the world and find their bliss. They are at the moment of becoming who they are. Not just the main characters, the secondary ones, too. And the parents. The cool thing is that everybody in the world really likes something, whatever it is, sports, science, math, art, sci fi, comics, whatever, I think that’s awesome. I also see being creative as a love letter to the world and to oneself.

I also now officially sound like a hippy. I am going to go burn a patchouli candle. I am not even kidding. 

GB: What’s a book or three you’re loving lately?

CC: I just got the ARC for my pal Jo Knowles new YA book Lessons from a Dead Girl. It’s a subtly beautiful look at a fraught friendship and the aftermath of some big stuff that happens.

I also just read Brian Wood/Becky Cloonan’s Demo. Which is pretty friggin’ incredible. It was an ALA 2007 Great Graphic Novel for Teens. It’s about kids and young adults on the edge of big moments in their lives. Beautiful!

Holly Black is the New York Times best-selling author of three books for young adults–Tithe, Valiant, and Ironside–and the younger-skewing Spiderwick Chronicles (an adaptation of which will appear soonish on a movie screen near you). She has things graphical and novelly in the works, and a master plan for world domination involving Dungeons & Dragons and science fiction writers. She is, basically, awesome. (photo credit: Chris Barzak, at Sycamore Hill 2007)

GB: Okay, the first question I always ask is about process, because the
Shaken & Stirred readers, they love the write porn. What’s your process
like when you’re working on a novel? (You can start anywhere you like, getting
the idea, actually beginning to write, trapped beneath a deadline, etcetera.)
(Astute readers are probably going to notice this is the exact same question I
started with yesterday: I’m lazy.)

HB: Every time I start a new book, I have a new
theory of how to write one. For example, when I started Ironside, I
thought that maybe I could outline by scenes instead of chapters. That worked
about as well as outlining by chapters had. Then with my new book, I was
thinking maybe I could write it all in first person to avoid getting bogged
down in description, then convert it to third and add description. So far, all
that has given me is a lot of leftover me’s and I’s.

What I’m looking for is a way around my totally inefficient
writing process which goes like this: 

1) I have a whole bunch of
things I’m interested in and I want to write about and a character that may or
may not have anything to do with those things.

2) I try and puzzle-piece together a plot. I wind up leaving
a bunch of stuff out and adding new stuff.  Possibly I retain only one or
two bits of what I started with.

 3) I write the first chapter. I revise it.

 4) I write the second chapter. I decide that the first
chapter doesn’t quite work any more. I revise the first chapter. That changes
the second chapter. I revise that too.

 5) I write a third chapter. It changes everything! I revise
from the beginning again.

 6) I notice that my puzzle-piece plot outline no longer even
vaguely resembles the novel I’m working on.

 7) In a panic, send what I have to writing group friends.
They have some thoughts. Revise again! And so on. I know that one is supposed
to write through to the end of a first draft, but I never manage it.

Being trapped beneath a deadline is scary, because you wind up having to
write so fast that you no longer have time to consider whether what you are
writing works and you have to rely on the eyes and ears of the people around
you more. I try and remember that I need time to think about the work I’ve done
and that I need to make sure I give myself that time.

GB: Your three young adult novels–Tithe, Valiant, and Ironside–are all
set in the same universe. I always find this tremendously appealing, novels
where the same characters and places can be found in different lights, because
it gives such a sense of largeness to the fictional world. When you finished
Tithe, did you know you’d revisit the world? How did this world evolve for you
as you were writing? (Also, is your next book set in the same universe?)

HB: I also really love novels set in the same world,
so that the world seems bigger and the intersections between characters with
history more interesting. It is one of the things I love about Charles de
Lint’s Newford stories. That said, although I intended Valiant to be in
the same world as Tithe (and Ironside), I didn’t know it would be
connected as tightly as it wound up being.

When I finished Tithe, I had been working on the book
for so long that when I finished I was relieved to be done with those
characters and that world. I thought I would never write about them again. Then
about a month later, I had the idea for Ironside and wrote a chunk of
what would become the first two chapters and I realized that I wasn’t sick of
the characters at all.

The graphic novels that I’ve been working on with Ted Naifeh
(called The Good Neighbors) are set on the other coast and I’m hoping that they
could be considered part of the same universe, although the faeries operate
somewhat differently. My next novel won’t be in that universe, though–at
least, there’s currently no overlap in terms of characters or creatures. 

GB: You are cold, cold, cold to your characters–you put your characters
through more terrible things than anyone else I can think of. Do you ever
secretly fear they will come to life and gang up on you? Or, more seriously, is
it ever hard when you’re working to put these characters in such awful
predicaments? Do you ever long to cop out and have a mean faery turn into a
kitten?

HB: Really? Me? I feel like I am such a pushover because I always give them
what they want in the end.

But I admit that I am very
pleased when I think of something just awful to do to one of them.

GB: You are a master of structure and plot. No, you are. How do you put a
book together? Do you do a lot of thinking about it up front or does that come
in revision?

HB: Characterization is the fun part for me, but because I find plot hard
I’ve thought about it a lot more. If I have developed some skill with it, it’s
because I really found it to be a challenge to get my head around. As you can
see from the summary of my process, I think about it up front as much as I can,
but it’s something that continuously evolves through revision.

I remember reading books on plot before I knew how to put
one together–they often represent plot with an inverted check mark,
where the action of the story rises steadily to climax and then quickly drops
down to resolution. My personal breakthrough came when I realized that I understood
plotting a lot better if I imagined a second check mark overlapping the first.
The first check–the one that I might now term "the time-limiting
plot" or "the plot that will be in the summary on the back
jacket" might be something like "A dragon is attacking a king’s lands
and he has to figure out what to do about it." But that isn’t a novel. For
one thing, if all that happens is a dragon attacking, the novel is kind of
boring. For another, if all that happens at the end is that the dragon or the
king is dead is, it’s not particularly satisfying.

But by imagining a secondary plot, a "personal
plot" that starts on the first page, provides most of the tension for the
first part of the novel, and is usually at the center of the last scene, I
understood things better. For example, in our dragon-attack novel, the personal
plot might be "the queen is in love with the king’s brother." The
tension between these two stories (perhaps the king goes to fight the dragon
because he nobly plans on dying so his queen and his brother can be together;
perhaps he sends his brother to kill the dragon to get rid of him), and the way
the climaxes and resolutions of each story relate to each other, finally let me
start plotting with some degree of success and make some sense out of the book
I was working on.

People who understand plot better will probably see this as
intensely simplistic, and there certainly are lots of different ways to
construct plot, but it was the realization that opened plot up for me.

GB: Unicorns?

HB: Well, they’re better than the alternative.

GB: Tell me some books you’ve been loving lately.

HB: I just read Ysabeau Wilce’s Flora
Segunda and
adored it. Ditto E. Lockhart’s Dramarama,
which took me back to the summer art program I went to in my freshman year of
high school and which utterly changed the way I saw myself. I also love
Kathleen Duey’s harrowing magic school book, Skin
Hunger.
And Cecil Castellucci’s Beige,
which I think is her best book yet. Emma Bull’s Territory, which
was so, so, so good. Also the book that Christopher Rowe just started but
is trying to pretend is a short story.