[Caitlin]

Wow Caitlin, fascinating interview (don't mind me, I'm always late).
No minding from moi! I'm glad you enjoyed the interview - late rather than never. :)
I kept thinking, yes, yes, yes. Also, I have to meet this woman one day... :p
But dahling, we've already decided that Penguin will set this up, no? ;)
All flippancy aside, now...
- there are so many parallels between us. My father was/is a mining engineer, but he does love reading (and fantasy, it was my father's copy of the LOTR that I stole when I first read it),
Here our experience differs somewhat. My dad tried quite hard to get me to read "real" books; he left a copy of A Tale of Two Cities on my bed one day when I was about 13 and, predictably, I refused to read it. Though this is a pretty superficial difference: his love of books and storytelling always, always buoyed me up in my desire to make my own stories.
(Btw, if you haven't read David Almond, have a look - try Heaven Eyes - he's a wonderful writer in the Garner tradition, and I'm sure you would like him).
I haven't read him, no; and I will, now ("now", of course, being a relative term). Thanks for the tip!

[Miriamele]

Miriamele, I know it's small of me, but I still can't help being shocked that there are still people around who think like your parents. It seems so much of another century, even though I know it isn't. All power to your imagination!

Thanks! And it isn't small of you to be shocked. I've known my parents my whole life and they still manage to shock me from time to time with their...limited ways of thinking. :)

[Caitlin]

Another interview, this one at the great FantasyBookSpot site:

http://www.fantasybookspot.com/?q=node/view/258

Thanks again to Duanawitch for her fabulous questions!

[alison]

Hi Caitlin - another fascinating interview. I was very interested in your comment about the act of writing being "enough", how professional structures play into that. I was having a long talk with my husband only last night about it. We've both been full-time writers for a long time - he's been a playwright for 20 years, I've been full-time about a decade. And we've made a living from it, which means accepting commissions, contracts, deadlines, &c... Aside from contracts for my YA fantasies, for example, earlier this year I wrote a commissioned drama piece for ABC Radio Arts and am committed to completing a "literary" novel and a book of poems this year under the terms of an Australia Council fellowship I'm on at the moment...and I've been finishing Book 3 of my own series as well.

Anyway, all this work has brought me pretty close to burnout this year. Daniel has been on a treadmill of commissions from France for years now. It makes you do the work, and in his case (and I hope mine) it doesn't negatively affect the quality of the work; I rather think in both our cases, the reverse has happened. But we both agree that writing has to be for its own sake, that the joy is in the making; and it's a little easy to lose that joy in those circumstances. (Right now I wish I could take a year off.) Because, unless it's fun, unless that central, disinterested pleasure is there, there is no point - you might as well be working in an office.

We're working on ideas to remember that wonderful, irresponsible pleasure... any ideas?

[Caitlin]

We're working on ideas to remember that wonderful, irresponsible pleasure... any ideas?
I admire you and Daniel for making a living only through writing. I think it must be incredibly demanding, draining, even dangerous (in terms of burnout, losing creative energy). My husband's also an artist - a musician - and we've tried a different route: one of us has always had a "real" job. Until two years ago, that was me. When I got my second contract, Mike (god love 'im) went to teacher's college and got his own "real" job: it was my turn to be the working artist. Because of this solid other income, I can concentrate on writing only one thing, one book (though yes, it would definitely be good to make more money, and perhaps I should look into doing different kinds of writing when the kids are a bit older).

What makes writing wonderful for me is the feeling that this is what I've spent my whole day looking forward to. For years I had that office job. Before that I had retail (bookstore) jobs; before that, university, highschool, etc. So it's only very, very recently that I've been able to think of writing as THE thing I do (though I'm doing much more mothering, still, than I am writing!). I've found that having something else you have to do increases the pleasure and significance of that thing you manage to squeeze in the rest of the time. That thing you do entirely for yourself, that's motivated only by need and love. That's been writing, for me, for so much of my life that I'm still in awe that I'm allowed to be writing during "business hours." This have to/need to dichotomy could be applied to writing itself, too. You and your husband have to write x number of words per day, for x number of projects, in order to keep afloat. When those particular "x"s are done with, do you feel luxuriously wonderful about returning to your fantasy books? The ones that also pay you money, but which you obviously approach with a different kind of feeling than the other projects.

So what am I trying to say? Hmm! Seems like relationship advice, in a way: remember what made you fall in love in the first place and take the time to talk about/recreate/emulate this. Look forward to the part of your day that gives you butterflies - the part that's all too brief, compared to the clutter of the rest. And take a day off? Just one?

I think this has been a pretty confused response, Alison! Yikes. Writers and their incoherence...:rolleyes: