Ask the Author: Caroline Allen
Answered Questions (6)
Caroline Allen
You discover so many hidden treasures about yourself, your beliefs and the world. I often create characters who teach me so much. In AIR, I created Usui, a Jesuit missionary in Tokyo, and this set me on a path of research about Japanese religion and spirituality that was so profoundly edifying.
I'll often write some deep truth, and stop, look at it, and feel emotional. "That is truly what I believe." To be able to speak your deepest truth in the world -- what better career could there be?
I'll often write some deep truth, and stop, look at it, and feel emotional. "That is truly what I believe." To be able to speak your deepest truth in the world -- what better career could there be?
Caroline Allen
This is one of my favorite stories. I'd been working on short stories based loosely on my childhood in rural Missouri for five years or more. A friend suggested the stories might fit together in a novel. That night, I bolted up from sleep with an epiphany. Four novels came washing through me: EARTH (being raised on a farm in the Midwest and rooted to the soul), followed by AIR (living abroad, floating above culture), FIRE (the burning up of the ego in London), WATER (healing in the rainy Pacific Northwest). All would be based on Joseph Campbell's hero's journey. A girl would go around the world seeking meaning on a planet that was undergoing the chaos of climate change. It was only much later during the publication process that we realized that this was an Elemental Journey Series.
On some level I "know" each novel before I write it, but the details still surprise me in the writing process.
On some level I "know" each novel before I write it, but the details still surprise me in the writing process.
Caroline Allen
So many things give me inspiration. I live on 88 acres, and walking through the woods every morning at dawn keeps me open, gentle and willing in the creative process. Great literature feeds the soul. Classical music. Big hard-bound visual art books.
I find staying in the soul place all day every day means one doesn't have to look for inspiration, because inspiration becomes a way of life.
I find staying in the soul place all day every day means one doesn't have to look for inspiration, because inspiration becomes a way of life.
Caroline Allen
FIRE is the next novel in the series, and I'm half-way through the rough draft. Just two weeks ago, I put the finishing touches on AIR, which is to be launched mid-October. This past week I wrote an essay called This is the Way I Write the Trauma, This is the Way I Heal. I'm submitting this contest to literary journals now. But truthfully what has 90 percent of my focus right now is my new art studio yurt! I'm installing a 20-foot yurt, with a solar arc and insulation in the woods to use as a "writing cabin" and an art studio. I'm so profoundly excited by this, that it might take a month before I pick up FIRE again.
Caroline Allen
I believe if you're committed to your writing and you're working regularly, you will some day "make it". Just keep going. If you take two years off, don't beat yourself up. Take up the pen or the keyboard and just keep going. When I coach, I notice some writers will focus on this one book. If this book makes it, I'm a success. If it doesn't, I'm a failure. You're a writer for life. That one book doesn't have the power to make or break you, unless you give it that power. Just keep writing! Go to workshops. Read. Make writing your life-long commitment, and you will be successful, whether it takes five years or ten or twenty. I gave up journalism, where I'd seen my writing published, and my byline on stories over a period of a decade. After this, I became a fiction writer and assumed it would take five years to get my first novel published. It took twenty years! And I've never regretted a moment of the entire path.
Caroline Allen
Besides being a novelist, I'm a book coach, and have dealt with understanding and moving through writer's block on many levels for two decades. The block is almost always psychological. What about this story or this chapter is triggering me? You just have to sit with it, be honest with yourself, and move through the fear. I actually do not call it "writer's block" anymore. Instead, I think of times of lower or no productivity as a gestational period of understanding and growth.
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