Interview with Caitlin Sweet

What can you tell us about your future projects?

Having just explained why I haven't written epic fantasy yet, I hope someday to try something on a larger scale. Some, dare I say, multi-volume thing. I've been playing with an ancient-Mediterranean-inspired story for half a year now, and although I've just put it aside, I do intend to go back to it. In the meantime, I'll probably stick to the kind of thing I've written so far: character-driven stories, told with a certain degree of lyricism and allusiveness. You never know, though: I might write something totally un-Sweetian...

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In this second set of questions, the focus is more on the intersections between Caitlin’s personal and professional lives. Instead of focusing so much on the mundane business of how the author goes about constructing the scenes, the emphasis is more on how real life matters, from raising children to related activities to real-life issues that appear to be reflected in Caitlin’s works are addressed. It is important to remember that authors are not composing their works in a vacuum and that their works very often reflect wider issues. So with this in mind, on to the second set of questions and answers done over a series of emails:

Based on many conversations that we've had over the past year, you talk a lot about your young daughters and the activities you do with them. What influence has raising your children had, if any, on how you view life and, by extension, on the writing of a story?

The quick, easy answer is that every single thing I do, think and feel is colored by the existence of my children - but that's way too sweeping! And not entirely true, though that might seem blasphemous to other parents out there. I was a writer long before I was a parent, and writing is still a refuge, of sorts: a place I go, a thing I do, that's about me as an individual. I've never experienced anything as emotionally and mentally consuming as being a parent, and a full-time one at that. (I actually found it much easier to balance things when I was working full-time and being a mother only for the couple of hours before the girls' bedtime.) So I need my writing now, more than ever. It keeps me separate from my mother-self, and usually allows me to return to that other self with a bit more equanimity and patience (though sometimes it doesn't work like that, either: when I was writing Silences, and feeling absolutely euphoric about how it was going, I was generally pretty snappish with my kids).

Practically speaking, having to juggle child-rearing and writing has been a very, very good thing. I'm a mother first, a writer second, but when I do get those two hours to myself in the afternoon, I focus immediately. I was never able to do this, before the kids.

Being a mother has influenced the content of my writing, too: I feel different, describing parent/child relationships, now that I've had children. Alea, in Silences, was a wonderful character to write: I got to trace her development from girl to young woman to pregnant woman to mother of a baby girl, and it felt natural and true. I'm not saying that people who haven't had children can't write about them (that would bring up all sorts of issues of voice appropriation, which I might not be up to tackling!). But now I understand, in a visceral way, how amazing, difficult and mind-boggling having babies and small children is, and that's a definite plus, when it comes to writing about these things.

As for how I view life: it's amazing how children make you remember what it was like to be a child. I watch my girls as they struggle and marvel at life, and find ways of putting these feelings into stories and pictures, and it makes me feel that what I'm doing with my writing is just part of that continuum.

In a recent email, you told me that you were giving a talk to a group of Grade 8 students about 'what it's like to be a writer.' If you don't mind, could you please tell us what you talked about and how the students reacted?

I was told to keep the comments very personal: when I first thought of myself as a writer, how I went about becoming a published one, what it's like to be one full-time. So I did a lot of talking about Caitlin Sweet: The Productive Early Years and Sweet in University: the Long Drought. I brought in some props, including the manuscript of my very first book, written when I was 13. I passed it around; some of the kids flipped through it for a long time. (It's handwritten, as all my first drafts are, and it's WAY neater than all the books that have followed!) I was also asked to give them advice, which, in point form, was:

- be flexible. Write on the subway or in a park, in a restaurant, on little bits of paper - whenever and wherever you feel like it. Don't think you need to have a system, at first. And if strictness ends up being the best, go for it.

- while you're being flexible, be focused, too. Learn how to write, only - to put other things aside, even if it's only for half an hour at a time.

- find a community. This could be friends, family - anyone in your daily life whom you're sure will give you solid, constructive responses to your writing (the ones who'll always love whatever you write are adorable and fabulous, of course, but do try to secure some actual objective readers, too!). Go online and find a weblog or a writers' forum. Find a bunch of sources of feedback: this is the one thing you'll need more than anything. Writing is solitary, and it's easy to lose concentration, confidence and even enjoyment when you spend too much time in your own head.

- expect to have other "real" jobs, while you're writing. Or marry someone rich.

- experiment with all sorts of genres, but be confident about whatever kind of writing you decide you love the most. For years people pressured me to read and write something "real," something that wasn't fantasy. I had no interest in doing this, and I did feel a bit weird about it, initially, a bit ashamed because I was being made to feel like what I was writing was inherently lower-quality than mainstream fiction. After I got over being ashamed, I got mad and defensive, and that was no good, either. Now I'm just proud of what I write. Try for this confidence right from the beginning!

How they reacted...well, pretty much how I expected 45 13-year-olds to react, I guess! The vice-principal, who was in the room for about five minutes, said later, "I couldn't believe how engaged they were with what you were saying!" To which I said, "Aha - so lounging back in your chair, balanced precariously on its back two legs, and smirking at your friends counts as engaged?" To which she said, "Uh huh!" It was a classic pack-mentality scenario: none of them wanted to seem too interested. Once I got one of the students on her own, though (when she was walking me back to the staff room), she asked me all sorts of questions. I do think there were a few in the bunch who really listened. Unfettered by the potential for sniggering or ostracization, the two teachers asked me loads of questions!

One uniformly positive gleaning, for me: when I asked how many of them read fantasy, nearly every single one put up his/her hand. I said, "Not just Harry Potter - other fantasy too" - and the hands stayed up. They were utterly unembarrassed about this particular admission, and this pleased me greatly!