Kate Austin's fourth novel, The Gossip
Queens, is being released this month. She
also has a novella, "If I Make It Through
December," coming out next month, in an anthology
titled Holiday Wishes. Here Kate answers
15 questions about writing, books, and more, all
in 15 minutes.
1. Which comes first when you're starting
to write a new book: character, setting, plot,
or theme?
None of the above—what really happens is
I get (and I say that advisedly) one sentence
or one phrase and the whole story grows out of
that. I don't start—at least consciously
thinking about anything, it just happens as soon
as that line or phrase comes to me.
2. Do you plot or write by the seat of
your pants?
Definitely by the seat of my pants—I write
that first sentence or phrase and just follow
it into the darkness.
3. How do you write the first draft?
(longhand, typewriter, Alphasmart, computer)
I'm trying a first draft by computer and so far
it's going well but I know if I get stuck I'll
go back to longhand, it's where I'm most comfortable.
4. How long does it take you to write
a first draft?
I don't think of a book as a series of drafts.
I write the book all the way through, revising
as I go along, and it's done. So it takes me somewhere
between two or three months (depending on interruptions
and how committed I am and mostly when my deadline
is).
5. How many drafts do you usually end
up writing?
See above. But I'll tell you how it works. I
write my first draft in longhand, and I go back
every day and revise what I did the day before.
Not major revisions, mostly just tidying up sentences
and maybe adding in a very few things. Then I
type it into the computer revising in the same
way as I go along, then I print it out and do
a final read-through. But basically, my first
draft is my last draft. I don't do major revisions
(at least not very often). My subconscious seems
to have done all the work for me before I get
there.
6. Out of all the books you've written,
which one is your favourite?
Oh, tough question. I don't know the answer to
that one, but I'd say it's a book I'm working
on that I don't have a contract for and may never
have one—it's a big book set in a small
coastal town that spans the period from 1900 to
1950-ish—World War I, female hysteria, the
birth of psychiatry, logging and fishing, the
Spanish Influenza—called The Sleep Master.
7. What's the best book you've ever read?
Depends on what day you ask me—but I'll
give you three for today—Jane Austen's Persuasion,
Michael Ondaatje's In the Skin of a Lion
and Margaret Laurence's The Diviners.
8. What's the most useful book on writing
you've ever read?
Hands down, Stephen King's On Writing.
9. What's the most useful writing advice
anyone has ever given you?
Enjoy the process and I got that advice from
myself.
10. Which character do you wish you had
created?
I'd like to have created Caravaggio in Ondaatje's
In the Skin of the Lion and The English
Patient or Morag Gunn in Margaret Laurence's
The Diviners. I'd kill to write a character
like one of those.
11. What prize or award would you most
like to win?
Another tough question—the GG, I guess.
It's the ceremony in the National Gallery I crave.
12. If you hadn't become a writer, what
might you have become instead?
An ivory tower economist or an art gallery curator.
13. What's the nicest compliment someone
could give you about one of your books?
I don't know—I love them all from "I
love the cover" to "you made me cry"
or "you made me laugh."
14. What's the worst thing about being
a writer?
Money, but that's only in the short-term.
15. What's the best thing about being
a writer?
Loving the process, getting up every morning
and getting to do the thing that I love and—finally—getting
paid for it.
Sheri Radford is the author of Penelope and
the Monsters, Penelope and the Humongous
Burp, and other upcoming books in the Penelope
series. Visit Sheri on the web at www.sheriradford.com.
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