++ Catherynne M ValenteI think the first book of Cat's I read was PALIMPSEST, and I immediately hated her. Her prose is just astonishing to me: each line shining and resonant as a ringing bowl. I just started her new one, RADIANCE, and she makes me want to chop my own hands off. I asked her to answer three questions about writing so that I might steal her powers. How many drafts of a piece do you do, on average? Your prose has such a polished quality, and I don't know if you sculpt sentences over drafts, or just have a low daily word count because you work the sentences slowly in a single draft, or whether I should have you killed because you're a genius. This is a complicated question for me! I write from first word to last word, moving through the book as a reader would. I can’t jump around and write different parts and come back, my brain just doesn’t work that way. If I skipped over a scene to write a different one I would never go back and write the one I didn’t want to work on enough that I skipped over it in the first place. But I also can’t
really go on to the next bit if the previous chapters and paragraphs and sentences don’t feel good to me. So I’m constantly editing as I go along. I’ll also read chapters out loud to my partner to get a feel for their rhythm and emotional effect. All this means that by the time I get to the last sentence, it’s something like a net third draft. I’ll put it aside for a few days to clear my head and have a little distance, then go back through it for clarity and tightening. Once my editor gets back to me, I’ll do any major surgery needed (usually this has to do with plot, which is much harder for me than language. I get very few line edits, but I have to really ride myself hard to keep my plots in
check and everything I want to be clear to the reader clear) and that will almost always be the final edit. I’ll simplify some sentence structure or syntax in the copyedit sometimes, if I let my grammar get away from me. But I also have a relatively high daily word count. This is mostly because my brain functions much better writing day on/day off or day on/two days off than every day. So I’ll write anywhere between 2000-4000 words on an average work day, ramping up to 4000-7000 if I’m under a tight deadline. If I’m at the end of the book, I’m usually flying, and there’s usually at least one 10,000 word day. But since my excitement carpal tunnel awhile back, I try to keep the big number days to a
minimum. The thing is, the way my writing comes out is pretty natural to me. It’s not necessarily how I talk, but it’s how I think. Writing in a pared down Hemingway-esque style is much harder and slower for me than writing the way I do. While coming up with names and concepts and details and certain kinds of wordplay takes plenty of thought and planning, on a word to word and sentence to sentence level, once I’ve got the “voice” of the book, it mostly comes out that way. I've met two kinds of writer, broadly -- the ones who do a deep outline and build from that, and the ones who strike out with a scene or image and just follow the
book wherever it wants to go. Which are you, and why? I used to be a no-outline, fly by the seat of my heart, dive in and blow things up and let the denouement fall where it may kind of girl. I never outlined anything—it felt like, if I did, all the excitement of making the book would sort of drain out the bottom of the outline. I’d know how it ended, so my brain would just wander off. So I wrote, cribbing Murakami, by my headlights, knowing just enough to navigate the local area where I was working. But then I started writing children’s
books. And kids don’t have a lot of patience for a story that unfolds organically, takes awhile to get where it’s going, and stops to smell the diners along the way. They want to get right into the action and stay there, and then go to some more action and more surprises, and then end with excitement, a big action scene, and a couple of shocking twists. At least for me, that requires an outline, so that everything is turning as tightly as it can, and I don’t wander off to sit in a field and think about witches for awhile. And once I started doing that with the kids’ books, I started doing it with the adult ones, too. So nowadays, I will write without an outline for about 3-5 chapters, then sit down and outline the rest. But it’s a loose outline. Chapter titles and act breaks and notes towards the end, without a prescription for the end. I still like to make
room to surprise myself, though. No spoilers, even for me. I have this theory that a lot of writers have a bucket list of genres or styles they want to try at some point. Can you name one, or do you think differently? I tried this question on Robin Sloan, but the premise kind of didn't work on him, so I'm testing it again on you. I TOTALLY have a bucket list! Until Radiance, I would have said science fiction. I definitely want to write more SF, and different sorts. SF is such a huge
blanket. I’d love to write a graphic novel, that’s a big one. And I’d like to try a murder mystery, maybe not even a speculative one (though, really, who am I kidding, I’d find a way to get some kind of tentacle in there). I’ve also been contemplating a straight-up horror novel. Almost all of my books have dark (sometimes very dark) elements to them, but I don’t classify any of them as primarily horror. And what the hell? I totally want to write a musical. Cat's new book is RADIANCE (UK) (US). You can find her at @catvalente and http://www.catherynnemvalente.com/. Are you liking this interview section? Let me know. And tell your friends.
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