Daphne Kalotay is the author of Russian Winter.
1. Can you tell us a little about your average writing day?
I don’t really have an average writing day, because I don’t keep to a strict schedule, though in general I get up each morning and write for the next few hours. How much time I spend writing depends on where I am in a project. If I’m in the very early stage, trying to produce new material, the longest I can work is 4 hours; after that, my brain just switches off, I’m so tired. But if I already have material to work with and am revising or editing, I can work for longer stretches of time.
2. When you are writing, do you use any celebrities or people you know as inspiration?
For characters, or just to keep me going? In terms of feeling inspired, just knowing that someone like Steven King, who is incredibly successful in terms of book sales, gets up every day and sits for long hours in his chair, working very hard, is a great reminder that writing never gets easier, no matter how many bestsellers you’ve had, or if you’re writing thrillers or sci-fi or so-called “literary fiction.” You still have to do the work.
3. What is your favourite Women’s Fiction book of all time and why?
If you mean a work by a woman writer, one of my very favourite novels is The Song of the Lark, by Willa Cather. It’s about a small-town girl who has musical talent and eventually becomes an opera singer. It’s truly wonderful, and very moving.
4. What is your writing process? Do you plan first or dive in? How many drafts do you do?
Though I sometimes have a very general, vague overall idea of what I’ll be writing about, I never have a clear plot, so I basically just dive in and hope for the best. As for how many drafts I do: too many to count. I mean that literally; if I tried to keep count, the number would be so enormous, not only would I lose count, but I’d become overwhelmed and then demoralized, I imagine, by how long the process takes.
5. What was your journey to being a published author?
I began writing short fiction, so my first publications were stories that appeared in literary journals. I’d been sending my work out for about ten years before my first short story was accepted for publication. After that, the rejections were fewer, but it still took many tries before most stories found a home. In 2005 Doubleday published a compilation of my stories as my first book, Calamity and Other Stories.
6. What do you think is the biggest myth about being a novelist?
That we crumple up pages and toss them in the trash when we grow frustrated. Movies about writers always show them doing that, when really much of our frustration—as well as our concentration, creativity, and overall devotion to our work—isn’t physically expressed or outwardly visible. We’re just sitting there thinking, thinking, thinking… and also writing.
7. What advice can you give to our readers who want to write a novel of their own?
Read the very best novels you can get your hands on. Reading is by far the best way to learn about writing, and if you want to write well you need to read good writing. Find what you love, and keep those novels in mind as you write your own. And know before you start that it will not be easy; you need to be prepared to devote the next few years of your life to working on that one project.
8. What are you working on at the moment?
Another novel, this time about professional musicians living in Boston.
Thanks, Daphne!
Visit Daphne's Website
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