Image may be NSFW.
Clik here to view.
In this Craft of Writing Q&A, Savannah Thorne discusses passion, perseverance, and how the practical advice offered by a teacher revolutionized her writing.
Savannah received her BA from the University of Iowa, where she studied in the Writers' Workshop under several of poetry’s great voices. She also holds two cum laude master’s degrees. Her poetry has appeared in more than 30 literary journals, including Potpourri, The Wisconsin Review, The Potomac Review, Border Crossing, Rhino, Borderlands: Texas Poetry Review, The Lyric, Parabola, Little Patuxent Review, The Atlanta Review, and Yemassee. She placed as runner-up for the Missouri Review’s Editor's Prize and the Casey Shay Poet’s Prize. She was delighted to be published in Conclave: A Journal of Character’s inaugural issue, and currently serves as Conclave’s editor-in-chief.
Q: Because everyone always wants to know this: Describe your writing environment and your work habits.
A: My writing environment is wherever I happen to be at the time. I do have a small office/study, but because I have arthritis in my spine and my office chair is small and hard, I tend not to spend much time working in there. I will take my laptop to bed with me, or to the library, or even to a fast-food play place so that I can have a few moments of concentration uninterrupted by my homeschooled kids. Heck, I even bring a pen and paper to the bath with me—probably my most productive space.
Q: What are must-haves and must-not-haves in your writing space?
A: As you can tell, I guess I’m not too picky about what I must have. I like cleanliness and organization. I also like to keep an “inspiration board,” if I can—a small tableau of inspiring phrases to make me loosen up and let go. You know how most people fear speaking in front of an audience, and seize up? I think the blank page is an imaginary audience. If we can just tell ourselves it’s okay to play and okay to mess up, we can let go and have fun. Writing should be our joy and our passion, not something we force ourselves to do.
Q: What compels you to write?
A: Well, there’s the old phrase “I write because I have to,” and I feel that’s certainly true, but you’re asking about being compelled, and I think usually a really good idea will compel me, along with characters I love. Additionally, I think it’s important, if you’re a creative writer, not to blog or media post too much. Keep your thoughts inside so that they explode onto the page.
Q: Describe your evolution as a writer. What was a turning point for you?
A: I attended the University of Iowa, which was an amazing and very inspirational environment that I was honored to be a part of, but there was an attitude that “Art” had a capital A and was something you were born with. My turning point came when I attended a very practical hands-on workshop spearheaded by bestselling author William Bernhardt. He discussed everything, from plot structure to how to pitch a novel to a literary agent. It revolutionized my writing. Now, I don’t approach projects as long, flowing, morphing artistic statements, but rather as a series of building scenes. After all, I don’t think anyone would claim an excellent violinist just stepped onto the stage for the first time as a natural virtuoso. He or she had to train and practice for years. He or she had to know the art inside and out. I recommend everyone do all the reading they can on the nuts and bolts how-to.
Q: Writing is an exchange. What do you want your readers to bring to your work, and what do you want to bring to them?
A: I’ll answer those in backwards order. What I bring: I want to entertain and make people think at the same time. Often, books do one or the other, but not both. What I want readers to bring: a sense of wonder, and a realization that, while I love my characters, they aren’t me.
Q: What feeds your writing?
A: You can have a candy bar if you eat all your vegetables, right? Well, maybe the hard work is the vegetables and the candy bars are those scenes you truly lose yourself in the moment of. Those are the scenes that feed me—sometimes I struggle and struggle to set a scene, but then suddenly a character just takes over and begins to grasp her life with both hands. That’s what I love.
Q: What is the most valuable advice you ever received as a writer, and what other advice would you offer emerging writers?
A: Again, I’d say it’s that you have to treat it as anything else you want to do. You can’t walk in off the street and be a plumber on sheer “natural talent.” You must work and know your stuff. It’s not happy advice, but I would tell writers that however hard you think it might be to get published, multiply that by literally, honestly, about a thousand times. Imagine querying thousands of literary agents. Not a few. Not sixty. Thousands. And then, when you get a literary agent, they may not be able to sell your book to a publishing house and you’ll have to start again from zero. Be sure this is really your passion before you set out. And as you’re working, take your time. Don’t be afraid to go slow and actually check every single word in your manuscript. Don’t be a prima donna: take bad criticism and run with it. Excise what you need to. It will only make you better. And once you’re published, you certainly will get bad criticism.
Q: What are you currently reading, and what do you think of it?
A: I’m reading The Crimson Petal and the White. It was recommended to me, and I kept trying to pick it up off the shelf, and I couldn’t get past the fact that it’s written in second-person present tense (You follow him down the alleyway, so to speak). But I’m so glad I finally got over my hesitance. I’m halfway through now and I think it’s brilliant.
Q: What makes something a good read for you?
A: It has to entertain and make me think. I prefer historical fiction because I love to escape to other times and places. If it sweeps me along, I’m happy. I think we should read things that are like what we’d like to write, because the voices and styles will get stuck up in your head. You don’t want garbage in, garbage out.
Q: Do you have creative doubts or fears? What are they, and how do you overcome them?
A: Oh, certainly, everybody does. Am I a fraud? Will I fail? Do I have any talent? Or, what if I do have talent, but circumstances prevent me from ever getting anywhere? In many different circumstances, I’ve simply had bad luck: in two cases, writing a novel on a similar topic to one that suddenly breaks through while my agent is marketing my book, causing her to give up on me; and in another case, Borders bookstore closed while I had just signed with a new literary agent. The agency closed its doors soon after.
Q: We don't have the luxury of waiting for inspiration. What do you do when you're not feeling the mojo?
A: Honestly, I don’t push it. A lot of people will tell you to write every day, and possibly they’re right—if you treat writing every day as fun and not a chore. If my brain and soul are telling me to take time off, time away—I listen.
Q: What are you working on now?
A: I just finished writing The Blood Almanack: The Secret Journals of Benjamin Franklin, the story of a young Ben whose interests are in alchemy and the arcane arts. It’s the untold story of his early years in England where he was inducted into Sir Francis Dashwood’s so-called Hell Fire Club. But what surprised me as I wrote the book is that the mother of Franklin’s illegitimate son, William, took center-stage and forced the story to really become about her. I’ve had some very nice interest from a new literary agent and I’m hoping that’s a good sign. I will also be presenting it to a few publishing houses shortly.
Q: What's the secret to writing unforgettable characters?
A: Letting them grab you by the throat when they want to. You have to be willing to take a backseat to them. I don’t mean to sound all namby-pamby: you can call them elements of your own subconscious, or results of your own tight plotting, if you want to. Whatever they are, and wherever they come from, they do need to act as if they have lives of their own. Also, let every single one—protagonist, antagonist, and others—have their own full story.
Q: What didn’t I ask that I should have—and what’s the answer?
A: I’d love to share my favorite authors with you: Sarah Waters, Alison Weir, Clare Clark, Betsy Tobin, Mary Renault, Nicole Galland, Jeannette Winterson, Philippa Gregory, Jane Alison, and of course many others—Frank Delaney, Peter S. Beagle, Virginia Woolf, JK Huysmans, Jeanne Kalogridis, Bernard Cornwell, Rebecca Stott, Dacia Maraini, Susan C. Petrey, Tracy Chevalier, Joanne Harris, Melanie Benjamin, Simon Black, Susannah Dunn, Kate Manning, and (judging from what I’ve read so far) Michael Faber, among so many others.
Also, if anyone would like further information about William Bernhardt’s workshops, the information can be found on his webpage at http://williambernhardt.com/.
Image may be NSFW.
Clik here to view.