Ask the Author: Shelley Schanfield
Answered Questions (4)
Shelley Schanfield
I've heard that there are two kinds of inspiration: Some say it can be something that's dictated to you, as William Blake said his poetry came from outside him. The other is that you see or hear something, and it sticks with you and inspires you to go on.
I've had both experiences. At times I feel the urgent need to sit down at my desk to catch a scene or a description or some dialog coming from somewhere, a dream or somewhere mysterious where stories are born—I don't know where, but I know I must put it down. This usually happens when I wake up in the middle of the night.
Other times, I see a hawk dive for some prey while driving to work, or I watch an episode of House of Cards and hear Frank Underwood say "Everything is about sex except for sex, which is about power," or I'm browsing through a book about Buddhism and read that courtesans were among his earliest and most ardent supporters, and I think, that's it. That would be a good scene, a character will take an animal's form. Or that's what drives the relationship between two particular characters, not love or sex, but power. Or a courtesan will perform a particularly important story before the royal Sakyan court, in front of Prince Siddhartha and his father the king.
I've had both experiences. At times I feel the urgent need to sit down at my desk to catch a scene or a description or some dialog coming from somewhere, a dream or somewhere mysterious where stories are born—I don't know where, but I know I must put it down. This usually happens when I wake up in the middle of the night.
Other times, I see a hawk dive for some prey while driving to work, or I watch an episode of House of Cards and hear Frank Underwood say "Everything is about sex except for sex, which is about power," or I'm browsing through a book about Buddhism and read that courtesans were among his earliest and most ardent supporters, and I think, that's it. That would be a good scene, a character will take an animal's form. Or that's what drives the relationship between two particular characters, not love or sex, but power. Or a courtesan will perform a particularly important story before the royal Sakyan court, in front of Prince Siddhartha and his father the king.
Shelley Schanfield
I never intended to write a novel about the Buddha’s wife.
In fact, I never intended to write a novel at all. I love historical fiction, and I wanted to read the story of Siddhartha, the young prince who lived sometime in the 5th or 6th century BCE in Northeastern India, and who rejected wealth and power, duty and family to wander homeless, seeking a way to free humanity from suffering. He became the Buddha, whose teachings have helped millions and are still as profound and useful today as they were 2500 years ago.
Long story short, I never found a historical novel about the Buddha’s life that satisfied me. Toni Morrison says you must write the book you want to read, and full of insanely naïve enthusiasm, I decided to write my own. I didn’t know what I was getting into, between the research I’d need to do and learning the writer’s craft, but that’s another story.
Once embarked on my quest to write the novel I wanted to read, I found myself immersed in India’s incredibly rich mythological past, which is filled with so many stories that Prince Siddhartha would have heard, as well as his own life story, which is told in the Pali Canon. His teachings were passed along orally for several hundred years after his death, and only came to be wriiten down in the Pali language (a kind of vernacular Sanskrit) around the 3rd century BCE. The Pali Canon is an enormous collection of sutras, legends, and commentaries on Buddhist meditative practices.
But even more overwhelming is the body of sacred Sanskrit literature. I wanted to know about the religious thought that shaped the Buddha, so I dipped into the hymns of the Vedas (composed around 1700-1500 BCE) and the early Upanishads (c. 500-400 BCE). I also read the Mahabharata in condensed versions, which though written down sometime between 300 BCE and 300 CE was undoubtedly passed along orally for centuries before, and thus its stories must have been familiar to Siddhartha. To give an idea of the vastness of India’s myths and legends, consider that the Mahabharata, an epic poem of over 75,000 verses, is seven times longer than the Iliad and the Odyssey combined, and as Professor Wendy Doniger of the University of Chicago says, “a hundred times more interesting.” There are several very good retellings in English; my current favorite is Mahabharata: A Modern Retelling by Carole Satyamurti.
You can find links to other books that I used on my website.
In fact, I never intended to write a novel at all. I love historical fiction, and I wanted to read the story of Siddhartha, the young prince who lived sometime in the 5th or 6th century BCE in Northeastern India, and who rejected wealth and power, duty and family to wander homeless, seeking a way to free humanity from suffering. He became the Buddha, whose teachings have helped millions and are still as profound and useful today as they were 2500 years ago.
Long story short, I never found a historical novel about the Buddha’s life that satisfied me. Toni Morrison says you must write the book you want to read, and full of insanely naïve enthusiasm, I decided to write my own. I didn’t know what I was getting into, between the research I’d need to do and learning the writer’s craft, but that’s another story.
Once embarked on my quest to write the novel I wanted to read, I found myself immersed in India’s incredibly rich mythological past, which is filled with so many stories that Prince Siddhartha would have heard, as well as his own life story, which is told in the Pali Canon. His teachings were passed along orally for several hundred years after his death, and only came to be wriiten down in the Pali language (a kind of vernacular Sanskrit) around the 3rd century BCE. The Pali Canon is an enormous collection of sutras, legends, and commentaries on Buddhist meditative practices.
But even more overwhelming is the body of sacred Sanskrit literature. I wanted to know about the religious thought that shaped the Buddha, so I dipped into the hymns of the Vedas (composed around 1700-1500 BCE) and the early Upanishads (c. 500-400 BCE). I also read the Mahabharata in condensed versions, which though written down sometime between 300 BCE and 300 CE was undoubtedly passed along orally for centuries before, and thus its stories must have been familiar to Siddhartha. To give an idea of the vastness of India’s myths and legends, consider that the Mahabharata, an epic poem of over 75,000 verses, is seven times longer than the Iliad and the Odyssey combined, and as Professor Wendy Doniger of the University of Chicago says, “a hundred times more interesting.” There are several very good retellings in English; my current favorite is Mahabharata: A Modern Retelling by Carole Satyamurti.
You can find links to other books that I used on my website.
Shelley Schanfield
I can't remember who said that being a writer is great because you can go to work in your pajamas. That's certainly a good thing about being a writer.
There's also the great feeling of nailing a particular scene or bit of dialog, or writing a single sentence that speaks volumes.
Solitude can be wonderful, too. What I find most rewarding is being awake very early in the morning—1 or 2 a.m.—and sitting down to work. That stillness and quiet frees me to write what I sometimes can't bear to put into words in the daylight, whether it's filled with joy or anguish or terror. Kafka said: "Writing means revealing oneself to excess...that is why one can never be alone enough when one writes, there can never be enough silence around one...why even night is not night enough."
There's also the great feeling of nailing a particular scene or bit of dialog, or writing a single sentence that speaks volumes.
Solitude can be wonderful, too. What I find most rewarding is being awake very early in the morning—1 or 2 a.m.—and sitting down to work. That stillness and quiet frees me to write what I sometimes can't bear to put into words in the daylight, whether it's filled with joy or anguish or terror. Kafka said: "Writing means revealing oneself to excess...that is why one can never be alone enough when one writes, there can never be enough silence around one...why even night is not night enough."
Shelley Schanfield
I'm fortunate in that for the first two books of my trilogy, it was never a question of facing a blank screen with nothing to say. It's more about getting to the truth of the story and telling it in a way that does the tale justice. That can sometimes stop me.
But ideas—for scenes, for sentences, for additional research—they bubble up on their own. It's catching them that can give me trouble.
But ideas—for scenes, for sentences, for additional research—they bubble up on their own. It's catching them that can give me trouble.
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