Catherynne M.Valente
About Author
Catherynne M. Valente is a New York Times Bestselling author of fantasy and science fiction novels, short stories, and poetry. She lives on a small island off the coast of Maine with her husband and a large collection of animals.
She has written over a dozen volumes of fiction and poetry for adults since her first novel, The Labyrinth, was published in 2004. The Girl Who Circumnavigated Fairyland in a Ship of Her Own Making is her first YA novel.
In 2010, The Girl Who Circumnavigated Fairyland in a Ship of Her Own Making became the first self-published work to win a major literary award, winning the Andre Norton Award for YA literature before it saw print in 2011, going on to become a national bestseller.
Interview
THE GIRL WHO CIRCUMNAVIGATED FAIRYLAND IN A SHIP OF HER OWN MAKING
Published by Corsair
June 2012
Called by the Green Wind, a girl named September agrees to travel to Fairyland for an adventure. There, she makes friends with dragons, gives up her shadow, comes across the misguided Marquess and circumnavigates Fairyland in a ship of her own making...
Q: This novel was first published in a series online, why did you choose to publish it that way?
A: Fairyland began as a book-within-a-book in my adult novel Palimpsest. It was the protagonist's favorite novel from when she was a child. And I meant to leave it at that, just a device. But when I was touring for Palimpsest, everywhere I went people asked me about Fairyland - was it a real book, where could they buy it? And I'd always say no, it's just a part of the story, which is so much about text and the layering of it, something we cool postmodern kids do sometimes.
But ultimately, this was the beginning of 2009, and the economy in the US was in a tailspin. My husband lost both his jobs and I couldn't sell a book. It came to a point where we didn't know where the next month's rent was coming from, and I decided that doing an online serial novel was a way to get us through until better plans could be made.
I chose Fairyland because so many people had asked about it, so many seemed to want it to be a real thing that existed in the world instead of just within the pages of Palimpsest.
I posted it on my website and put up a simple donation button: donate whatever you think the book is worth. Or nothing at all. I didn't put it on Kindle, which hadn't truly taken off yet, or Kickstarter, which was only just beginning. I just made it available and asked that if people liked it, mightn't they throw something in the hat?
I could not possibly have predicted how much wonder and magic would come from that little webpage.
Q: You then went on to have it published conventionally - why do you still think traditional publishing is the right way to go?
A: The shortest and easiest answer is that I don't want to run a small press. I want to write. The work of professional editing, copyediting, cover art and design, illustration, publicity, marketing, and printing is incredibly time-consuming, and, unless one believes that none of the people who do the work of publishing a book should get paid a fair wage, expensive.
I like being able to create my manuscript and give it to a group of professionals who will give me money up front so that I can eat and have a roof over my head, and put all their talents toward making it the best book it can be. They are better at it than I am.
Self-publishing, quite obviously, is a powerful tool. But it is only that, a tool, one of many, and when you have a good relationship with a publisher, that publisher is worth their weight in gold.
Q: How much of the story did you already know, before you started writing it?
A: Oh, none, before I started writing. The first paragraph is intact from Palimpsest, and I'd written about three pages - up through The Green Wind explaining the rules of Fairyland - as an Easter egg for Palimpsest readers to find online. But I had no idea of the plot at all. I just dove in.
Around chapter 8, which is not coincidentally the end of the first act (I structure Fairyland novels in three acts with 8 chapters each, making 24, also not coincidentally the number of books in The Iliad and The Odyssey) I knew I had to know the rest of the book very well in order to set everything up in the beginning.
The nature of a serial novel is you can't go back and change anything, so I needed to be able to see it all and outline it in order to continue. In that way, Fairyland is much more organized than my other books - I usually like to write more organically and see where things go.
Q: How did writing for an online audience change the way it was written or the writing process for you?
A: I increased September's age from 11 to 12, but for the most part the editing was cosmetic. My editor has always been amazingly supportive of my voice. The serial nature of Fairyland can be seen in the cliffhanger chapters, the chapter descriptions, which are of course an old technique but are also useful in getting people to click on a chapter link, and in the quickness of the action. I think it was all to the good! But writing a serial is difficult and full of pressure - it's a subtly different skillset from the normal writing process. (Whatever the normal writing process is!)
Q: How much of the story draws on stories you read or enjoyed as a child?
A: Quite a bit - but in the sense that I loved classic children's books like Narnia, The Wizard of Oz, Alice in Wonderland, Peter Pan, but bits of them always bothered me.
That Dorothy was so obsessed with leaving the magical country so she could go back to being orphaned on a pig farm during the Depression, or Wendy being treated like everyone's servant in Peter Pan, or, well, I can't say what troubled me to tears as a child in Narnia, as it's a major element of the book!
I wanted to have a conversation with the books I loved, to reference them but also to subvert them and make the elements of children's fiction into something that wouldn't have bothered me so much when I was a kid - and at the same time create something original and my own.
Q: The authorial voice is very strong in this narrative, why did you decide that it should be present?
A: I'm not sure I ever made a conscious decision to use it, though it's definitely inspired by Barrie's narrator in Peter Pan.
In Palimpsest, Fairyland was a bit of a pastiche of the children's books of the early 20th century, and the strong narrator is a part of that. I always envisioned, I suppose, Fairyland being read aloud, and the narrator's asides being a little like a parent's explanations of the story.
Q: Did the main character, September, arrive fully fledged when you started to write her?
A: No, she definitely grew over time. I wanted a bookish, shy kid with a strong relationship to her mother, as a dead or absent mother is so often a feature of portal fantasies. But that's not a character, it's just a collection of traits.
I think September became herself over the course of her adventures, both in the book and in my mind. And she's growing up all the time - she doesn't know who she is quite yet.
Of course she thinks she does - that's part of the joy of being twelve and thirteen. You know everything right up until the moment that you don't.
Q: There are a number of other wonderful characters in the novel, which of these stands out for you and how did they develop?
A: A-Through-L, certainly. He's very fun to write and a dear creature - and one that I'm so often asked about. All my love of libraries is in Ell, and I think there's something identifiable in how much he wants to be loved and belong somewhere, how awkward he sometimes is in trying to be worthy of his friends.
I also think the Marques is the best villain I've ever managed. She's delightful to write, as most villains are, but she went and got so complicated and affecting on me, and now I'm just terribly attached to her.
Q: How well did you know your version of Fairyland before you started writing?
A: I didn't really. Fairyland sounds so generic, so really I can put anything in there, any bit of folklore, and it will blend together. Now that I'm writing the third book I have a much clearer idea of how Fairyland is arranged and its history, but when I began it I was playing, making it as big and sprawling as I could.
I prefer to move through a narrative as a reader would, not planning too much, letting things unfold. Fairyland is more tightly plotted, but the world, as all good fairylands do, is constantly evolving.
Q: If you could find yourself anywhere in your Fairyland, where would it be?
A: I think the Autumn Province! I love autumn and I always wish it could last forever. Plus, I think I'd be an excellent alchemist.
Q: During the story, September loses her shadow what is the significance of that?
A: Well, I can't tell you yet! The sequel is all about September's shadow and the how, why, and whatfor of her decision to give it up.
Q: Can you give us a hint of the sequel what kinds of happenings should we expect?
A: September's shadow has become Halloween, the Hollow Queen, mistress of the underworld of Fairyland - Fairyland-Below. She's causing quite a bit of trouble for everyone in the sunlit world, and September must travel underground and face the consequences of having set her shadow loose.
Q: Do you prefer writing sequels or stand-alone novels, and why?
A: I do tend to prefer standalone novels - the excitement of beginning something new is one of the things I love best about writing. Fairyland will be the longest series I've ever done, and I look forward to experiencing that, how a story evolves and grows with time, with the author getting older along with the protagonist.
Q: How does your writing day go?
A: I try to get the heavy hitting out of the way in the morning - nine months of the year I have an office down on the shore of the island where I live, and I go down, get coffee at the cafe next door, and write for four or five hours before heading home for lunch and administrative work, of which there is plenty in the writer's world!
During the summer, my office is an Umbrella Cover Museum (a museum collecting those little sacks your umbrellas come in from all over the world) and I work at home, which is more distracting. I'm still trying to work out a good summertime schedule! I try to write every day that Im not traveling.
Q: Any tips for budding writers?
A: Read everything. Genres you might want to write and genres that you know you won't. You have to read just everything you can possibly get your hands on in order to be able to write a good book. You have to be part of the conversation - and that means reading bad books too.
If you don't read good, bad, and everything in between, you'll never be able to tell what's good, bad, or in between in your own work. And really, if you're not reading, why are you writing? They go together, and doing one always fuels the other.
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