Follow-up Interview with
Laura Williams McCaffrey (2006)
by Debbi Michiko Florence
What have you been up to since the last time we spoke?
Writing, reading, being a Dance and Gymnastics Mom. I'm sure I'm much faster at pinning up hair these days.
I've been through several revisions of WATER SHAPER. I've re-written the first half of a new fantasy novel a couple of times. Both of these involve a lot of staring out the window.
I've been speaking more often at conferences and also have been teaching writing residencies. I really enjoy speaking and teaching, especially as they give me an excuse to obsess over whether I need new shoes. All my anxiety becomes focused not on what I'm going to say or do, but instead on whether I should walk around in a low heel or a lace-up boot.
Tell us a little about your new novel, WATER SHAPER.
WATER SHAPER features another angsty girl. This seems to be my specialty, which I'm sure has nothing to do with the fact that I once was one.
It's about a princess who is an outcast for loving water, something her father and everyone else around her don't understand. She meets someone who does understand, a handsome king, and runs away with him. The king and the land she runs to aren't quite what she expected, and she runs again, hoping to find a place that's a perfect fit.
It's also about a storyteller searching for people who'll listen to the forbidden tales he longs to tell. His stories help the princess when she's in a difficult situation. The novel examines different aspects of storytelling: how stories inspire and scare people, how people struggle to create new stories, how people shape their life stories.
WATER SHAPER, like ALIA WAKING, has many fantasy elements. What do you like best about writing fantasy?
I tell the same kinds of stories contemporary fiction authors do. I just use metaphors that have always resonated for me: a girl discovering and learning to use hidden powers, books that have secrets and magic. Some people write about children whose parents are splitting up and neglect them, I write about children lost and alone in a dark wood.
I was fascinated by the main character in WATER SHAPER, Margot, both by her connection to water and her search for a place to belong. Tell us a little about how she came to be.
She was there from the beginning. She was an outcast princess, a lonely girl who wanted to find a place where she belonged. I also knew she would follow in many, many fifteen-year-old girls' footsteps and fall for a guy who she's certain is perfect, a white knight, and then she'd discover he wasn't. She'd have to learn to save herself.
Not that I'm trying to say fifteen-year-olds have less intelligence or judgement than adults do. Grown women, thirty-something, forty-something, fifty-something women sometimes make the mistake of wanting white knights rather than real men, too.
WATER SHAPER is filled with fabulous and interesting characters. Bird, the storyteller's apprentice and Orrin, the king, among the few. All your characters are fully fleshed. How do you develop your characters? Any special techniques you want to share with writers?
Thanks, I'm glad they seem fully fleshed. How do I do this? Usually the protagonist comes easily. The secondary characters are more difficult. When I feel I don't know characters well enough, I write in their POV for a while, even if they're never going to be narrators in the story. I let them have their say.
What was the most challenging thing about writing WATER SHAPER? How was the process similar and different from when you wrote ALIA WAKING?
WATER SHAPER has a broader scope. Margot travels to different lands and meets people with differing beliefs. Bird, a second narrator, tells a piece of the story. I also re-told folk tales and wrote original tales that are meant to seem like old folk stories.
I used a similar process in that I started from the beginning and kept re-writing until that seemed solid. Then I moved forward. However, I re-wrote Bird three or four times. I re-wrote Orrin once or twice. I have hundreds of pages in a drawer — characters, events, places — that used to be in this story and now aren't.
What are you working on now?
I'm working on another otherworld fantasy. It has a more contemporary feel than anything I've written before.
How can fans/teachers contact you?
I have a "Contact Me" section on my website.
What do you like to do in your down time?
Down time?
If you could be any character from a book (not your own), who would you want to be, and why?
A very tricky question. I can't really settle on a character. I can tell you what worlds from books I'd very much like to take a trip to. Earthsea, of course, and Middle Earth. Stroud's alternative England, Clarke's alternative England. Hmmm...I'm noticing a trend.
Follow-up Interview © 2006, by Debbi Michiko Florence.
See also my earlier interviews with Laura, in 2003 and 2004.
what's new?
For more information about Laura and writing, see her web site and read her blog at Here There Be Dragons
See also my earlier interviews with Laura, in 2003 and 2004.
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