Emmi’s Comments (group member since Jul 29, 2014)

Emmi’s comments from the New Voices in Fiction Authors from William Morrow group.

It's getting late in my time zone (UK) and I have an early morning, so unfortunately I will need to sign off.

It has been a pleasure and privilege talking to you. Thank you, everyone! So many interesting novels in this group, and so many interesting views on writing. I'll probably log in once more tomorrow to see what I've missed.

Best of luck to everyone, and thank you once again.

Carrie wrote: "I am not an extrovert. I can do the song and dance but it leaves me wanting to roll up in a corner an..."

I know exactly what you mean. I enjoy promotional work to an extent, and have been lucky enough to travel to new places, attend interesting events and meet some fantastic people. But after spending three out of four weeks on a tour in May and June, I felt like retreating to a cave in a desert for a few months.

I'm able to switch the public persona on when I need to, but I do need time to recover afterwards. It's a delicate balance.

Encounters with readers. While I think the writing process should be a reward in itself, hearing back from the readers does bring a whole new dimension to it. It's an affirmation of the fact that you have brought something into the world that wasn't there before.

It was also a very emotional moment when the University of Kent, where I first started writing my novel, hosted a book launch for me in June this year. I may have got a bit teary.

I rarely listen to music while I'm actually writing. Lyrics are a big distraction, but sometimes I feel that soundtracks help me. Yann Tiersen's Goodbye Lenin! is a longtime favourite, as well as Philip Glass's soundtrack to The Hours. While writing my first novel, I listened to the soundtrack of Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon repeatedly. Interestingly, a reader told me just this past weekend that she had been listening to that while reading my book.

I find the relationship between music and writing really interesting, because both are related to sound, rhythm, mood, emotion and structure.

My days tend to vary. I usually try to sort out emails in the morning and reserve the afternoon for writing. I also try to make sure I get out of the house every day - at least to take a walk. The hours spent writing depend on where I am with the manuscript. It could be anything from two to ten hours a day. I'm still trying to find a balance that works for me.

Do you use music as inspiration for your writing? To help you create atmosphere, to put you in the right mood, etc.? Do your stories have "soundtracks" - songs or pieces of music that you "hear" on the background of certain scenes?

Memory of Water is a story set in a post-climate change future world that is running out of freshwater. The main character, Noria, is a young woman studying to be a tea master. When she comes of age, she must take the responsibility for guarding a hidden freshwater spring, a secret her family has been keeping for generations. Because water is a precious resource, the military are trying to get their hands on the spring and Noria finds herself and her loved ones in grave danger.

I'm so glad I'm not the only one with endless TBR stacks!

As a rule, I'd love to read everything in the world, ever. If I could have any superpower, I'd probably pick either being fluent in every language, or being able to read (and absorb what I'm reading) so fast I'd have time to read everything I want to.

Without superpowers, though, I'm left with dozens of unread books on my shelves at all times, a repeatedly broken oath not to buy any more of them, and a notebook solely dedicated to writing down the names of every book I want to read.

Ariframli wrote: "What is the main message from your novel?"

I'm not sure that my novel has a message as such, but I hope that it will make people pay more attention to their relationship with their environment and the responsibilities that go with that. Which is not to say that the answers are necessarily straightforward or easy; when it comes to important issues, they are more likely not, and the ethics can be complicated.

M.P. wrote: "Homesickness seems to be a driving inspiration for a lot of people. I set Ice Shear in upstate New York because while living in California I missed the landscape and people of the Hudson Valley. ..."

This is really interesting - I never knew that homesickness was such an important inspiration for so many writers. It certainly had an impact on my own writing process as well.

I started writing Memory of Water soon after moving from Finland to the UK, and because I missed Finnish winter, I ended up writing about a main character who has never seen ice or snow but tries to imagine life with them.

I remember reading about a study which found that many authors use vivid childhood memories as material for their writing, so that might explain why homesickness plays so strongly into the experience of writing a novel, especially a debut.

Joshilyn wrote: "HA -- I love all these, and I remember penny candy, BUT I am ashamed!! EMMI I AM A HUGE MOOMIN FAN! How did I MISS that in your book! *shame!*"

Yay, another Moomin fan! The references weren't hard to miss, though - the book is not described in any detail, and Jansson is an extremely common surname in Sweden and Swedish-speaking Finland. Spotting the connection would probably have required supernatural abilities!

The write-or-run method sounds pretty effective.

Personally, I find that I need to switch off the internet for at least a couple of hours a day, otherwise my self-discipline goes down the drain. So I try to allocate an hour or so every day for things I definitely need to be online for (emails, social media promo etc.) and for the rest of the time, I try not to go online much. I actually installed an internet blocking programme on my laptop, and I'm finding it very helpful.

I also find it useful to set a goal for that day in the morning (for instance, 'today I'll rewrite scenes X and Y') and then work until I get there. If I've still got time and energy left for more, great; if I don't, at least I'll have accomplished enough to feel like the day wasn't wasted.

Suzanne wrote: "I have an idea, part autobiographical, part fiction. Do I start with an outline or just write as I intend the story to unfold?"

Hi Suzanne,

I would agree with CJ that some people are outliners and others are not. I'm an outliner all the way; I find that I need to know what I'm writing towards in order to get anywhere with the story. It's best if I know the end from the very beginning. The outline can and will change during the writing process, of course, and I revise it as necessary.

But I also know writers who are perfectly happy to sit down without much (or any) planning and just see where the story will take them. I think it all comes down to your personality. If you prefer to plan things ahead in general, chances are that you will find it helpful in your writing process too. If, on the other hand, you are not a planner, you may prefer not to outline too much.

There is no right or wrong here, I think, simply different approaches. You just need to find what works best for you. Good luck!

A Shakespeare adaptation with a sci-fi twist? I can't wait to read that!

I'm actually curious - do any of you find the second novel more difficult or easier to write than the first one? Or more or less the same?

I'm about halfway through my second novel, which is not a sequel to the first one, but a stand-alone set in an imaginary fantasy universe where dreaming is forbidden. I have never written a novel with a deadline before, which creates a new kind of pressure for me. I also feel that the expectations are higher now because I have already done this once and I should show I'm capable of doing it again, only better.

Sounds to me like everyone loves easter eggs! I know I do.

In Memory of Water my main character is reading a book the title of which is never revealed, but the book I was thinking about is Moominland Midwinter by Tove Jansson, a stark contrast to the world of my novel where it never snows anymore. Furthermore, the story includes references to a mysterious group of explorers known as the Jansson expedition. This was also named after Tove Jansson, who is one of my favourite authors.

Hi Jenn,

I think the most important thing about naming characters is to think about the era and cultural context of the story. Since Memory of Water is set in a future where cultural influences have blended, I got to play with resemblances between Finnish and Japanese names, but I always tried to keep the names credible and gender-appropriate.

Furthermore, like Joshilyn, I try to find a name that fits the character. For instance, in Memory of Water, my main character is studying to be a tea master and her best friend - arguably the most important person in her life - is named Sanja, a Finnish name which bears a close resemblance to sencha, a type of Japanese green tea. I also ended up swapping two character names at the last minute, because I kept mixing them up and felt that I had named them "wrong"! Once I made the swap, the issue disappeared.

And I find baby name books and websites a great resource, because they tell you the meanings and etymologies behind the names.

I know the rest of the world has already read everything by Robin Hobb, but I'm a late starter and am currently reading Assassin's Apprentice. It's beautifully written, compelling fantasy fiction.

I also cannot wait to get my hands on David Mitchell's The Bone Clocks which comes out next month. Cloud Atlas and Black Swan Green are among my favourite novels, and I'm a huge fan of Mitchell's skill with narrative voices.

Memory of Water was born from a single core image of a young woman preparing tea in a future world that was running out of freshwater.

I was interested in Japanese tea culture and its connection with Zen Buddhism, and at the same time I was actively following news about climate change and its impact on freshwater resources. One day these two separate things combined in my head to create the image which contained the main character, the world and the main conflict of Memory of Water in a nutshell. I wanted to write a coming-of-age story, and I was interested in the responsibility that comes with reaching adulthood, and its ethical implications in harsh circumstances.

Like Mary, I would have to say self doubt. When you are an unpublished writer, it's easy to feel like you are writing in a vacuum. I had to convince myself every single day that the story was worth telling, even if no one else would ever read it. Writing is full of uncertainties and external rewards are never guaranteed, so for me the only real reason to write a book is a strong internal need to write it. This is what became a driving force behind Memory of Water.

Time was also a challenge: as a writer, you learn to give up some other things in order to make space and time for writing. It's a strange combination of creating the illusion that you have all the time in the world and in reality squeezing a lot of hard work into moments that are sometimes quite short.