Ask the Author: Shelagh Meagher
Answered Questions (7)
Shelagh Meagher
All the Light We Cannot See and The Witches of New York are on my regular list - my reading doesn't really change in the summer versus any other time of year. In fact I probably read more in the winter, with those long, dark evenings.
Shelagh Meagher
Apart from launching my non-fiction work 'Gumption: The Practical Woman's Guide to Living an Adventuresome Life', I'm rewriting a novel that I first created years ago. It's a great story, filled with love and passion, set it Italy, but it wasn't well written the first time! I didn't have the skills. So I'm going through the slog I mentioned in one of the other questions. The hard, repetitive work that turns a great story idea into a great book.
Shelagh Meagher
My eldest daughter and I were sitting in the Toronto airport on our way to Italy, where we had once lived. It was a Saturday and we'd made the decision to go 4 days earlier, found flights, tah-dah. My daughter was musing about how her friends (she was only 19 at the time) thought it was incredible to take such a trip so impetuously, but we knew it wasn't really impetuous. The pins were all in place to make it possible. Then we started talking about the nature of adventuresomeness (which isn't a word, but should be). And what allows a person to be so. And could it be learned and taught, as opposed to something you were just born with or not.
Turns out that being adventuresome is indeed a learnable skill, and anyone can do it. It took three years of intense effort to pull together how, but that's where the idea started. In an airport waiting room, eating Timbits. That's so damned Canadian!
Turns out that being adventuresome is indeed a learnable skill, and anyone can do it. It took three years of intense effort to pull together how, but that's where the idea started. In an airport waiting room, eating Timbits. That's so damned Canadian!
Shelagh Meagher
I think a lot, and ideas pop into my head that I think would make a fantastic story or a really awesome non-fiction work. But sometimes as I start actually writing them, I find they have no stickiness. The characters aren't doing it for me, or I find myself bored while writing. That's a death sentence for an idea, and I move on. If it doesn't excite me, I can't do it. If it does, I need no other inspiration.
Some people write books they think will become bestsellers. I can't take that approach. I write what inspires me in the first place and see where that goes.
Some people write books they think will become bestsellers. I can't take that approach. I write what inspires me in the first place and see where that goes.
Shelagh Meagher
Writing the first draft is the fun part. Everything lies before you - all the possibilities. But to get to the finish line, assuming you want to create something of quality, you have to rewrite and rewrite, and submit to the dispassionate but oh so critical efforts of a really good editor. it's an incredible slog, that part of things.
So get yourself a good editor and listen to them. Then be prepared to kill all kinds of things you were totally in love with, if they don't work for the story. It's a ruthless exercise but it makes any book way better.
So get yourself a good editor and listen to them. Then be prepared to kill all kinds of things you were totally in love with, if they don't work for the story. It's a ruthless exercise but it makes any book way better.
Shelagh Meagher
Having an reason to explore ideas I might not otherwise have pursued, or at least not to the extent that I do when I'm creating a book. And I find it very entertaining to write. When I'm working on a novel I can't wait to get back to it and find out what the characters are going to do next, since I don't tend to plot that out in great detail.
Shelagh Meagher
Usually I sit in front of my computer and write anyway, then delete, then write, then delete. Somewhere in the back of my brain I trust there's something useful going on, just by taking the action.
But if it remains like that for a couple of days I sometimes leave off writing for a couple of days more, and, while I'm walking or doing some other mundane physical thing (somehow this is an important part of it), I think about why the story isn't moving forward. I never think of it as "I" can't move forward. The story has met an obstacle and I have to figure out what it is.
Usually it turns out that I've been trying to get my characters to do something they would never do. I might have considered it useful for the plot. But the little devils know their own minds, and don't like to be manipulated. Sounds crazy, because I'm making them up, right? But they really do come alive in my head and have their own ideas.
Once I clear up what it is they ought to be doing, the writing generally flows again.
But if it remains like that for a couple of days I sometimes leave off writing for a couple of days more, and, while I'm walking or doing some other mundane physical thing (somehow this is an important part of it), I think about why the story isn't moving forward. I never think of it as "I" can't move forward. The story has met an obstacle and I have to figure out what it is.
Usually it turns out that I've been trying to get my characters to do something they would never do. I might have considered it useful for the plot. But the little devils know their own minds, and don't like to be manipulated. Sounds crazy, because I'm making them up, right? But they really do come alive in my head and have their own ideas.
Once I clear up what it is they ought to be doing, the writing generally flows again.
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