WritersDigest.com I 45alive for so many people. When you see how many people
work on a fi lm or TV series, it’s amazing that you start off
sitting in your room alone, imagining a world, and then
there are hundreds of people who work to bring it alive.
You built an entire world with the books Practical
Magic and The Rules of Magic. How did you build
that world and what’s next for the Owens family?
When I went on the set of Practical Magic, I felt the person
that I was most like was the set designer because when
I went into her offi ce, her walls were covered with these
boards with diff erent photographs and pictures, these
inspiration boards. I do that too. I have these big boards
that I use diff erent colored markers with, and I write down
every plant, every animal ... very detailed. What I’m trying
to do is build the world, because I feel if I build the world
in the right way, with the right details, the characters can
just walk inside of it and appear. It’s really important to get
those kinds of details. For me, it’s also really fun.
Are you going to write another Owens book?
I don’t like to talk about books I’m working on because
you never know what’s going to happen. But I’m working
on a third book right now and having a lot of fun with it.
Th e world is already there. Which is great, but also I have
to adhere to the rules of that. It can make things compli-
cated, but I’m really enjoying it.
You did another project last year that was really
interesting—Faerie Knitting. Tell me about that.
My friend who’s a novelist, Carolyn Turgeon, is the edi-
tor of Faerie Magazine. She asked me if I wanted to write
and I did some writing. Th en I said, maybe my cousin
and I could do a column together because I thought it
would be fun. So I would write the fairy tale and then
she would have to come up with the garment mentioned
in the fairy tale. It was really fun to work together and
to create this together. I’m not a very good knitter. But I
think it’s a good practice for writers because there are a
lot of similarities. One of the things about knitting, espe-
cially when you’re not that great at it, is that you have to
constantly be taking it apart. It feels like a waste of my
time, all these hours that I spent. Th en you think, No, it’s
the process—you’re getting better and it’s teaching you
things and you’re using what you learned and it’s not just
the end result, it’s the doing of it, that matters. Th ere are a
lot of similarities between the way you have to approach
anything and the way you approach writing.
MODERNMYTHMAKER
ReadAliceHoffman’s 2006 WDinterviewforevenmorepro
writingtipsatwritersdigest.com/oct-19.Ericka McIntyre is editor-in-chief of WD. Follow her on Twitter
@Cincy_Bookworm.Many authors end up with a book that they never
fi nished, a project that they have to walk away from.
How do you know when to walk away and how do
you know when to stick with something?
Like in a love aff air, how do you know when to stay
and when to walk away? You just know it’s not working
anymore. I’ve found with some projects that I stopped
working on, I do use bits and pieces of them: characters,
or places, or something, but some are just really lost. It’s
very hard to judge that. You can’t really tell anybody that;
you have to feel it. It also helps to have people that you
trust to read it, and I always feel if two or three people
are telling you the same thing, you have to listen to that.What’s the best writing advice you’ve ever gotten?
My professor, Albert J. Guerard, was a genius teacher and
novelist and scholar. He said to us the opposite of what
most writing teachers tell you. Most writing teachers
tell you to write what you know. He told us, write what
you can imagine. Which was extremely freeing. I never
wanted to write what I knew. I thought [my own life] was
boring. I wanted to write about other things and places.
I wanted to write about emotional lives. He told us about
a student he had, a famous writer named John Hawkes,
and he’d written a book set in London. And he had never
been to London. I was shocked and it changed the way I
thought about writing and what I could and couldn’t do.Is there anything else you’d like to share with WD?
I’m a big believer in being in a workshop or class, working
with other writers, which is not to say to just take any-
body’s advice. When you’re in a classroom or a seminar,
it makes you write because you know you’re going to go
there Th ursday. It kind of forces you to do the work. Th at’s
really important because nobody has to write. It’s not like
we’re doctors and people will die if we don’t do what we
do. Th ere has to be something that makes you sit down
and do it. At the beginning, oft en it could be that you’re in
a class and you have to do it. You signed up for it, you’re
going to do it. So I always think it’s a good idea. WD