The Nebula Awards

Delia Sherman Interview

Interviewed by Charles Tan on November 11 2008

Can you tell us how you got your start in the industry?

I started going to cons when I was in graduate school, long before I ever thought of being a writer.  Mostly, I bought books and went to panels and was shy over in a corner, watching all these interesting people who knew each other talking about books I mostly hadn’t read.  I’m a fantasy reader, not so much an SF reader, and there wasn’t a lot of talk about fantasy in the early 70’s.

Then I started to write. 

I wrote for myself, and I wrote one story over and over again until I got it more or less right.  At some point, I sent one of them out to W. Paul Ganley’s Weirdbook (I knew him from cons), and he printed it.  With the encouragement of Jane Yolen, from whom I took a one-week course in Fantasy Writing at Mt. Holyoke College, I sent another one to Ed Ferman at S&SF, and he bought that.  Eventually, I got a little more professional about the market and the world and much braver about talking to people.  It really is a lot about people, in this business—not so much “contacts” as friendships.  Unlike in most businesses, professional relationships in the SF field seem to me to be based on a shared love of a particular kind of writing, a particular aesthetic, a particular way of looking at the world.  It’s why the field spawns so many movements, I think. 

But that’s another topic.

What is it about speculative fiction that appeals to you?

The fact that it’s simultaneously (and unapologetically) mimetic and non-mimetic.  The trick in successful speculative fiction (both fantasy and science fiction) is to make the invented world seem as real as the world in which we shop for our groceries.  When it’s really done right, it allows us to come back to our quotidian world and see it with new eyes.

I also like the narrative patterns of speculative fiction.  I like the fact that it deals with Myth and the Big Questions mainstream domestic realism finds embarrassing.  You can’t really write about Faith and Beauty and Wonder and Fear and like that outside of genre fiction, not without sounding prissy or naïve or ironic.  What spec fic has going for it is metaphor--not just at a sentence level, but at a structural, almost cellular level.  And the cool thing about it is, you don’t even have to be conscious of it to take advantage of it.  Although I’d argue you write better books if you are a little conscious of what you’re doing.

For you, how different (or similar) is it writing for teenagers as opposed to adults? Should there be a distinction?

When I began writing for a teen audience, I read a lot of YA and middle-grade books, and concluded that the main (and often the only) difference between YA and adult fiction is the age of the protagonist.  The concerns of middle age aren’t particularly interesting to the young, and why should they be?  They’re still working out how to be responsible for themselves and fit into a community of their peers without losing track of their individuality.  Kids?  Jobs?  Losing faith in your ideals and having to go on anyway?  Yeah, they may have to deal with these things, but keep them to the subtext, please.  Otherwise, you’re writing a Problem Novel, and everyone knows only parents and teachers really like those.

I also think the pacing of a novel for younger readers is different.  Description is okay if it enhances wonder or helps move the story forward.  Philosophical asides slow things down and will probably get skipped anyway.
Conversations have to be lively and to the point.  There’s not a lot a lot of room to be discursive or self-indulgent.  Which means that things like theme and meaning have to grow out of the action, the characters, and the way the story is structured even more than they do in an adult novel.

I think the distinction between children’s and adult fiction is no more or less useful than the distinction between SF and westerns, fantasy and mystery, mainstream and romance.  They’re all signposts that help readers find their way through the bewildering wilderness of things available to read.  Sometimes a kid wants to stretch his imagination to being an adult with a family to provide for and sometimes he’s happier with a kid learning to sail or fly a spaceship—or Captain Underpants, who is ageless.  It can be useful, though to know roughly what you’re getting.

What was the inspiration behind “The Fiddler of Bayou Teche”?

Cajun dancing, spending time in the Bayou country, and the traditional English ballad called The Bonnie Lass of Anglesey.  I’ve been wanting to do something based on that ballad for ages.  It’s so mysterious and unlikely and magical and narratively simple, yet evocative.

There’s this king, see, and he’s frightened because fifteen of his lords want to dance his gold and his lands away.  So he sends riders looking for the Bonny Lass, who is obviously a hell of a dancer, and offers her a house, some land, and the husband of her choice if she’ll help him out.  Which she does.  But when it comes time for the payment, she refuses house, land, and husband, and makes the king dance with her instead.  She wins, of course, which I guess means she becomes queen over his land, although the ballad doesn’t say so.

I tried doing it straight, and that was boring, so I set it aside.  And then I went back to Louisiana to do research on a YA.  I have kin in Louisiana, so I’d spent a lot of time there when I was a kid, but not since I was in college.  It just hit me, as we drove the back roads of the bayou country and talked to people who still believed in loups-garoux and went dancing of a Friday night, that this was a milieu in which the ballad would make perfect emotional sense. It sure made it a fun story to write.

What’s your writing process like?

Building a coral reef.  For me, thinking and writing are virtually the same thing.  I can make lots of plans for a story before I start writing it, but mostly they don’t work.  Usually what I do is throw myself into writing, follow my nose though some kind of narrative, then go back and figure out what works and what doesn’t and why.  Then I re-write and re-write and re-write until it feels right to me.  And then I give it to my trusted readers, listen to their comments, and re-write some more.  Eventually, I get to the point where nobody can think of anything more I can do to it, and then I send it in.

This is not an efficient way to write.  It is, however, the way I do it, and all my attempts to do it some other way have been extremely frustrating, not to say discouraging.

Which are you more comfortable or interested in currently: writing short stories or novels?

I am a natural novelist.  My ideas ramify, my characters multiply and talk a lot, my plots pick up incident as black sweaters pick up white cat hairs. 
Many short stories have been abandoned when, after a certain amount of struggling, I am forced to conclude that yes, I’ve tried to jam yet another novel idea into 10,000 words or less.

However, short stories are, well, short.  And after writing a certain number of them, I’m beginning to get the hang of it.  Plus, if I’m writing something that needs research, I don’t need to do as much.  Besides, when I’m stuck in the middle of a novel, and it’s been months, it’s nice to be able to turn to a short story and clear my mind.

So the short answer to your question is:  it depends.

As a writer, what’s one of the biggest hurdles you’ve had to overcome?

Taking my work seriously as work.

For many years, I was a teacher of Freshman Comp, an aspiring scholar, a gardener, a home-maker, a cook, a daughter, a supportive partner to a law student, a quilter, an editor (non-professional) of my friends’ scholarly writing and fiction.  Oh, and I wrote too.  The writing was never more important than anything else, including the laundry.  While I was learning, this was appropriate, I think.  But as I began to sell, first short stories and then novels, my habit of writing whenever I had 15 minutes and dropping everything as soon as I was needed elsewhere got in my way.

Gradually, I began to move the writing closer to the top of my List of Things To Do.  I try to write every day.  I let dishes pile up and laundry compost.  Ellen is an excellent cook, and if we’re both in mid-project, there’s always take-out.  I don’t quilt, I quit academia, and I only teach workshops.  I try to keep my editing down to what I can handle easily.  Because I’m a writer who has a life.  And writing is a big part of it.

Living with Ellen Kushner, what influence does she have on your writing and vice versa? When collaborating with her, either as a writer or as an editor, is it easier for you?

We are each other’s first readers.  We discuss ideas, characters, plots, backstory, cool notions, and things we’re having difficulty with.  This is bound to have an influence on what and how each one of us writes, although we’re both fairly independently-minded cusses, and are perfectly capable of ignoring each other’s advice when so moved.

Collaborating, as we did in The Fall of The Kings, is a lot of fun.  I, at least, took chances with characters and writing kinds of scenes I don’t usually write:  action scenes, for example; sex scenes.  I knew she wasn’t going to let me do anything stupid, so I went for it, knowing she’d fix the awkward bits.  If writing is tightrope walking (and sometimes it is), collaboration, at its best, is working with a net.  The net metaphor applies to our editing each other, too.

In your opinion, what are the strengths of interstitial fiction?

Interstitial art, art that draws from a number of established genres to create its effects, is how art grows.  To stick to literary examples, where would SF be without the hybrid of the gothic and the scientific paper that is Frankenstein?  Where would contemporary fantasy be without the self-conscious melding of myth and epic poetry and modern adventure novel that is The Lord of the Rings?  These things are genres now, but they weren’t when they were written.  The interstitial works that are too odd, too out there (Lawrence Sterne’s Tristram Shandy is a good example), tend to stand alone, the end as they are the beginnings of their literary lines.  Others spawn genres of their own.  It’s happening all the time, at every level of culture.  Remember when mysteries with vampires and werewolves plus romance was something only Laurel K. Hamilton wrote?

How did you get involved with the Interstitial Arts Foundation and Endicott Studio?

Well, a bunch of us were sitting around our living room in Somerville one Saturday afternoon, talking about books we liked that hadn’t done all that well commercially, and artists who were having a hard time selling their art either to fine art galleries or genre venues and musicians who were performing stuff that people liked but couldn’t get booked because it was hard to describe.  And somebody (probably Ellen) turned to somebody else (possibly Terri Windling) and said, “You know, we should start a foundation or something.”

And (fools that we were), we not only agreed, we actually called friends and wrote letters and organized a symposium, chaired by Heinz Insu Fenkel and sponsored by SUNY New Paltz, where we decided to design a website and edit an anthology to start with.  And then we did those things, and got non-profit status.  I was president for a while, and then I was treasurer and secretary, and now I’m just treasurer.  New people are getting on the board, with new ideas of what Intersitital means and new ideas about how to talk about it.  And this makes me very happy.  When we started all this, historical fantasy was interstitial.  Can you imagine?

The Endicott Studio for Mythic Arts was started by Terri Windling long before the IAF was thought of.  We’re part of it because we often write fairy and folktale-based fiction and Ellen is an old friend of Terri’s and we support her work and her goals.

Do you find it easy switching between your writer hat and editor hat?

They’re very different.  Writing is, if you’ll excuse my taking over your metaphor, hat-making, starting with catching the beaver and felting the fur.  Editing is more like shopping.  Basically, all I have to do is decide if I like a story and whether it fits well with other stories I like.  This is fun (except for the businessy bits, described below).  Editing in the sense of taking a story that’s almost there and suggesting ways of making it better is more like teaching, which I love.  Critiquing, editing, teaching are all, for me, like doing five-finger exercises, scales, arpeggios, and school pieces for a pianist.  They’re a way of thinking about pure craft without having to worry about content.  And then when I get to the writing part, I’m all warmed up.

What are some of the challenges you’ve encountered as an editor?

I guess the business end of the process is the hardest for me:  coming up with an acceptable template for the contract, making sure the authors get everything to me in a timely fashion (I have too much sympathy with their busy lives), going over layouts and galleys and proofs.  Writing rejection letters.  I hate writing rejection letters.  And there are always so many more of them to write than acceptances.

Having taught in various workshops, what advice do you have for writers who are starting out?

Read, Write, and Live.

No, really.  The best way to learn to write is to read consciously.  Once you’ve devoured a story or a novel because you love it and want to know what happens next, read it again with a critical eye and figure out what made you love it.  How are the scenes structured?  What do you learn in each one?  How did the author plant information about the world, the backstory, the characters?  Compare beginnings.  Compare endings.  Look at how the sentences go together.  Do this a lot.  There will be a point where you find yourself doing it whether you want to or not, but that’s fine.  You’ll get over it.  And you’ll have learned a lot about the craft of writing.

Write a lot.  Give yourself exercises.  Write descriptions of people you see every day, trying to convey who they are and not just what they look like.  Write short narratives that aren’t really stories.  Write stuff from odd points of view: a doorknob, a dog, a kitchen spoon, a woman (if you’re a man), a man (if you’re a woman).  Read your writing aloud—to yourself if you’re shy, to your pet if you have one, to your best friend if you trust them.  It’ll train your ear and let you know when your prose is clunky and when it flows.

Live. Since you’ll probably have to get a day job, remember that work-place politics, however unpleasant, have a lot to teach you about group dynamics, not to mention dramatic tension.  Travel whenever you can.  I’m not talking Paris or Peru here (although that’s nice, too).  I’m talking a part of town you haven’t visited before.  Without a map, preferably.  Talk to people on public transportation and listen to what they have to say.  This is often easier if you pretend to be someone you’re not.  Go see live theatre, even if it’s your little brother’s high school production of Oklahoma.  Community theatre, even when bad, can teach you something about characters and pacing.  Sit in a park or café or diner or public square and people watch.  Take notes.  Fiction, no matter where or when it’s set, is finally about human beings interacting in the face of fear, danger, boredom, grief, persecution, or an invasion of giant ants.  Technology is grand, but it’s human beings, fallible, often weak, noble, base, interesting human beings, who invent and build it.

Then go read some more.  Non-fiction, too. Biography, history, books about sushi and embroidery and biotechnology and the movie industry and what ever else catches your fancy.  It’ll all come in handy sooner or later, and it’ll give you something to read on the plane or the bus while you’re traveling.  If you’re not taking notes.  Or starting a story.

Any other projects you’re currently working on?

I just handed in the sequel to my children’s book Changeling, and am working on the proposal for the next book in the series.  I’m also working on some short stories set in the same world of New York Between in different eras, with different protagonists.  There’s a YA novel about the Great Depression I’m doing research on, and an adult novel I’ve had in the works for some years now, set in Paris during the Franco-Prussian war.  Oh, and I’ll soon begin reading short stories for Interfictions II.

Delia Sherman’s most recent short stories have appeared in the Viking young adult anthologies The Green Man : Tales from the Mythic Forest, The Faery Reel: Tales From the Twilight Realm, and The Coyote Road.  Her adult novels are Through a Brazen Mirror and The Porcelain Dove (which won the Mythopoeic Award), and, with fellow-fantasist and partner Ellen Kushner, The Fall of The Kings.  She has co-edited anthologies with Ellen Kushner and Terri Windling.  Interfictions: An Anthology of Interstitial Writing, edited with Theodora Goss, came out in 2007.  Interfictions 2 (with Christopher Barzak), will be published in 2009. Her first novel for younger readers, Changeling, was published in 2006.  Its sequel, The Magic Mirror of the Mermaid Queen, is due out in 2009.  She is a past member of the James Tiptree Jr. Awards Council, an active member of the Endicott Studio of Mythic Arts, and a founding member of the Interstitial Arts Foundation board. Delia has taught writing at Clarion, the Odyssey Workshop in New Hampshire, the Cape Cod Writers’ Workshop, and the American Book Center in Amsterdam.  She lives with Ellen Kushner in New York City, and writes wherever she happens to find herself.

Charles Tan is a speculative fiction fan from the Philippines. He has lots of online doppelgangers, including a Singaporean politician and a Filipino basketball player, but people should be warned that the “real” Charles Tan is a bibliophile who stalks his favorite authors. His blog, Bibliophile Stalker is updated with daily content including book reviews, interviews, and essays. He is also a contributor for SFF Audio.

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