Big 4 with Bec: Kristin Cashore

Kristin Cashore grew up in the countryside of north-eastern Pennsylvania in a village with cows and barns and beautiful views from the top of the hill. She lived in a rickety old house with her parents, three sisters, and a scattering of cats, and spent her days reading and daydreaming.

At 18 Kristin went off to college to Williams College in Williamstown.  Kristin spent a phenomenal year studying literature at Sydney University. After college. Kristin developed a compulsive moving problem: New York City, Boston, Cambridge, Austin, Pennsylvania, Italy, and even a short stint in London.

During her stint in Boston, Kristin got an M.A. at the Centre for the Study of Children’s Literature at Simmons College which got her thinking and breathing YA books, and, got her writing.

Since Simmons, Kristin hasn’t stopped writing, not once. Kristin has been writing full-time for a bunch 8 years now, first doing educational writing for the K-6 market and now working on her novels.

 Kristin recently moved from Jacksonville, Florida, to Cambridge, Massachusetts.

1. Kristin, you’ve said that your two favourite activities are reading and daydreaming, and that you view them as being fundamental to the writing process. Can you tell us how you think this process works.

Well, my writing generally starts with characters; characters are usually the seeds that take root in my mind and grow into book ideas that want me to write them. But where do these characters come from? I’m not really sure, but I think they sometimes come from the way my daydreams interact with stories I’m experiencing, or stories I already know. I’ll read a book, and maybe there’s something I dislike about the way one of its characters is portrayed—so I’ll imagine the character a bit differently in my daydreams.

Over time, the daydream will change, elaborate, grow, and before you know it, the character I started with has changed so much, and her friends, surroundings, and story have changed so much, that she’s an entirely new person living an entirely different life than the one I started with. She is fully mine now; or maybe it’s more accurate to say that she’s fully her own, but living in my head. That imaginary person in my daydreams might turn into the basis for one of my book ideas. (Not all the people in my daydreams do!)

Taking it one step further, let’s say that I have this character in mind for a book and now it’s book planning time.  Well, at that point, every book I read (and frankly every movie I watch and story I hear, fiction or nonfiction) is stirring up my imagination even more, and feeding my thought process. When I am writing a book and especially when I am planning a book, every single thing that happens in my life or even that brushes against my life is feeding the process.

It’s difficult to explain it cleanly and clearly, because it’s not a clean or clear process!  It’s a big mess, really, and manifests itself as mountains of paper and post-it notes—snippets of ideas written down—all over my house.

2. After enjoying great success with Graceling and Fire, you’re on to your third book. Is the process getting easier or more difficult? What new challenges have you been confronted with while writing the third novel?

In my experience, each book is harder than the last. I think—or at least, I hope—that this is because I’m growing as a writer, and subsequently find myself taking on a bigger, and more ambitious, challenge each time.  My third book, called Bitterblue (and now in revisions) was unquestionably the hardest of the three to write, and is proving to be the most difficult to revise, mostly because it has a more complicated plot than the others, it’s a bit longer, and the happenings and emotions I’m trying to convey within it are a little less solid and straightforward than in the previous two novels.

You could say that it’s a book about relationships and also about people’s inner lives. It’s much harder to write that sort of thing than to write a woman having a fight with a mountain lion! (Though please note that there are fights, and plenty of action, in Bitterblue, too! Readers who know Graceling and Fire know the kind of thing I tend to write, and this one follows suit.)

A smart writer friend of mine named Sandra McDonald (the author of the wonderful short story collection Diana Comet and Other Improbable Stories) once told me that “each book teaches you the way it needs to be written.” Every time I start a new book, I remember how true this is.  Each book is its own creature, and each one surprises you with its demands.  I am often well into a book before I realize what I’ve gotten myself into. I am kind of at the book’s mercy at that point, and my commitment to the book, whatever it turns out to be, keeps me going.

3. What was your inspiration for the Seven Kingdoms?

The kingdoms came from the characters. The characters of Katsa, Po, and Raffin came to me first, and, in the case of Katsa and Po, they came to me with their special powers intact, so I knew I was dealing with a fantasy world. Beyond that, I would say that my setting grew from the requirements of my plot. I would also say that it grew a bit messily and haphazardly—it was my first fantasy novel, and at the time, I really didn’t know what the hell I was doing. I’ve been having fun picking up some loose ends, changing things around, and structuring things with a bit more care in my current work in progress, which also takes place in the seven kingdoms. When you write more than one book in the same fantasy universe, your later books always bear the burden of trying to correct mistakes you made in the previous books.

4. Which of your fictional characters Burns Brightest in your mind and why?

Probably Bitterblue, and probably because she’s the one I’m working on at the moment.  My readers might remember that she was ten years old in Graceling and in a distressing and dangerous position.  In my work in progress, called Bitterblue, she is eighteen years old and with a LOT on her plate.  I’m at the happy point in the writing of the book where I feel I have a handle on her, and it turns out I like her quite a lot. That doesn’t always happen with my characters! In fact, usually it’s the peripheral characters I’m fondest of, not the main characters, and its often a surprise which characters end up being most meaningful or dear to me.  It can be quite random—just like in real life.  For example, by the end of writing Fire, I found myself to be extremely fond of Nash.  I never saw that coming, because he was so unattractive to me at the beginning of writing the book!

Check out Kristin’s blog here!

(Author photo courtesy of Laura Evans)