This post was originally published at Novelicious.com and is now at WritingTipsOasis.com. WritingTipsOasis.com acquired Novelicious.com in June 2022.
Susan Stairs, author of The Story of Before, recently answered a few questions for our Novelicious readers. Here's our review of her book.
Can you tell us a little about your average writing day?
It starts around 10am, when the house is empty of all other family members and I’ve finished a rather perfunctory cleaning of the kitchen. If I’ve been very good, I’ll have had a walk by that time too. It usually takes me a while to get ‘in the zone’, but even before I do, I’m thinking about my plot, my characters, and how I can move on from where I left off the previous day. Once I get going, I hate having to pull myself away, even for fairly essential stuff like eating lunch. I generally finish up around 5.30.
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When you are writing, do you use any celebrities or people you know as inspiration?
I don’t use anyone in particular as inspiration, just other writers in general. I keep reminding myself that what I’m doing is not an impossible task – hard work, yes, but not impossible. Sometimes simply holding a book inspires me. Feeling the weight of it in my hands reminds me that countless other authors have managed to keep turning the thoughts in their heads into stories between covers, and if they can do it, there’s no reason why I can’t either.
What is your favourite Women’s Fiction book of all time and why?
Not a question I can readily answer. There are so many books I have loved, I couldn’t possibly have a favourite. A couple that have definitely lingered long in my mind are ‘The Lovely Bones’ by Alice Sebold, and ‘The Secret History’ by Donna Tartt. I do tend, I have found, to favour stories written in the first person, perhaps because it’s a more natural way of seeing the world.
What is your writing process? Do you plan first or dive in? How many drafts do you do?
A mixture of planning and diving in. I usually have a broad outline of the main event around which the story will evolve, but only a vague idea of how I will get from beginning to end. Once I create my characters, I find they dictate how the story maps itself out. Their personalities and the way they think and act drive the narrative forward. Usually, the way things turn out is as much a revelation to me as it will be – I hope! – for the reader. I tend to do a lot of revising and editing as I write – that seems to work for me. But even after I thought I was finished ‘The Story of Before’, the editing process continued. It went through, I think, 7 full manuscript edits before it was ready for publication.
What was your journey to being a published author?
I had already written and published several books myself on the subject of Irish art between 1988 and 2004. In 2007, I enrolled in a Creative Writing class in the Irish Writers Centre and the encouragement I received there gave me the confidence to apply to do the MA in Creative Writing in University College Dublin in 2008. I was over the moon when I was accepted and the instruction I received from the tutors there helped me enormously. I began my novel ‘The Story of Before’ while I was on the course, submitting the first few chapters as my dissertation. After graduating, I spent more than a year finishing it and then, over the course of 9 months, sent chapters to 16 UK agents. Five of those requested to see the full MS, and 2 offered me representation. I chose Lucy Luck of Lucy Luck and Associates who has been wonderfully enthusiastic, supportive and encouraging. She found me an editor who loved my novel, Sara O’Keeffe of Corvus, an imprint of Atlantic Books, and – joy! – she offered to publish it.
What do you think is the biggest myth about being a novelist?
That ‘The End’ is not really the end. I’m not sure what other people think but I had never realised the amount of work involved after the initial task of actually finishing the novel. That’s only part of the process – the gestational period if you like. There’s a whole other set of tasks to be done after it’s been ‘born’!
What advice can you give to our readers who want to write a novel of their own?
Never give up. It might sound trite but I can’t think of anything more important. The books you enjoy reading were written by people who never gave up. You will not see any books by those who did. Sometimes I wonder now how I continued to write my novel when I had no idea whatsoever what would happen to it. But in order to get to the destination, you must complete the journey, however difficult it may be. If you have a story to tell, tell it. Write it all the way to the end. And read. All the time. There’s no better inspiration.
What are you working on at the moment?
My second novel. Written from the point of view of Tim who, as an adult, is recalling the summer he spent in Ireland as a fourteen-year-old and how it changed his life forever.
Thanks, Susan!