Interview with Polly Shulman, author of Enthusiasm

I picked up Enthusiasm as I was looking for reasons to avoid revising for exams - and the book turned out to be perfect procrastination material.

Fifteen-year-old Julie’s best friend, Ashleigh, is an Enthusiast: in other words, she’s always going through one craze or another. Sometimes it’s a particular band, sometimes Arthurian legends. This time around, Ashleigh has discovered Julie’s favourite author - Jane Austen. And it’s not enough for her to read the books: she insists on living them, too, developing an enthusiasm for period clothing and dancing. The long-suffering Julie inevitably gets dragged into her friend’s latest craze, and together they gatecrash a ball at the nearby Forefield Academy, an exclusive private school for boys. At the ball, Ashleigh decides she has found her Mr Darcy… and unfortunately the boy in question, Charles Grandison Parr, turns out to be Julie’s Mr Darcy as well. However, Ashleigh insists that Julie’s Mr Bingley is a boy called Ned, and finds a way to continue the acquaintance with the boys by getting involved in their school play. What follows is a delightful little dance of who-likes-whom and he-likes-me-he-likes-me-not.

The book fortified my belief that YA at its best is much more romantic than most romantic novels meant for grown-ups (but that’s a whole other soapbox!). Shulman writes about thoroughly likeable young people without being cloyingly sweet, and my only complaint about Enthusiasm is that, at barely 200 pages, it was a bit too short. But I heartily recommend the book to (a) Jane Austenites, (b) teenaged girls, (c) anyone who has ever been a teenaged girl, and (d) actually, to everybody - except the most determined, cantankerous cynics in the world.

And so, like any self-respecting Enthusiast, the moment I put the book down I wrote to the author and started bombarding her with innumerable questions. Here be the results…

On YA:
 
LEENA: I’ve read a lot about YA being the Hot Genre nowadays, and I’m a recent (and enthusiastic) convert to the YA cause myself. What does your genre mean to you? What does it allow you to do that writing for adults wouldn’t? Has it ever occurred to you to write something else, or were younger readers your target audience from the first?
 
POLLY: I’ve always wanted to write for kids 10 and up, partly because of how passionate readers are at that age. I know I was–that’s when I stayed up all night reading Pride and Prejudice. YA is my lifelong dream, not something I’ve settled for. I get irritated when people ask me, “When are you going to write a real book?” There’s nothing less real about my genre than any other genre. Adult literary fiction is just as much a genre as science fiction or YA fantasy or self-help, and they all have their advantages and disadvantages. I like the way YA fiction cares about story–you’re not allowed to bore your readers. I find that good discipline, but there are aspects of YA that I don’t like, such as its widespread preachiness. You’re allowed to have villains and injustice, but any serious story has to be somehow redemptive. I can imagine finding that restrictive if I wanted to write a bleak tragedy. Fortunately, I’m more of a comedy-romance-adventure writer, at least so far, so I haven’t run into that problem.   I may someday write a novel for adults. I’m not ruling it out. So far, though, most of my ideas have always been for books for and about young people.
 
LEENA: I think this is what makes YA so appealing to adults, too - the books are aimed at passionate readers, and they do everything they can to tap into that passion. I don’t think grown-ups are rushing out to buy Harry Potter or Twilight - or indeed Enthusiasm, or Jaclyn Moriarty’s novels, or any number of great books aimed at younger readers - because they’re dumbed-down or childish. I think they (we) are just sick and tired of the blasé and the post-modern or post-ironic or whatever phase we’re supposed to be living in.
 
POLLY: Yes, I think you’re probably right–certain kinds of reading pleasure are easier to find in genre books, including YA, than in literary fiction.
 
LEENA: Do you read a lot of YA yourself?
 
POLLY: I used to. It was one of my favorite activities. Unfortunately, ever since I started writing it I’ve had trouble reading it. I think I’m afraid of being influenced or feeling competitive. Nowadays I only read YA when I have to: when I’ve agreed to review it, when I’m interacting with the author and don’t want to hurt her feelings, etc. I even hesitate to read new books by my favorite writers. It’s so sad! But I guess every great pleasure comes with a price, and this is the price I pay for getting to write.

On Austen and Enthusiasm:
 
LEENA: Unless my suspicious mind was deceiving me, I could spot allusions in Enthusiasm to every Austen novel - except Northanger Abbey.
 
POLLY: Actually, Northanger Abbey was one of the biggest inspirations for Enthusiasm, that and Sense & Sensibility. I had my heroines concentrate on  Pride & Prejudice because I thought it was the only Austen novel I could count on my readers–girls age 12 and up–to have heard of. But in retrospect I’m not sure that was such a great idea. Some readers assumed Enthusiasm was supposed to be a modern version of P&P, so they were disappointed that, for example, the hero isn’t much like Mr. Darcy.

In fact, Enthusiasm has stronger (or at least as strong) similarities to other Austen novels. For example, the two girls with contrasting personalities–one passionate and outgoing, the other shy and self-restrained–are straight out of Sense & Sensibility. I named a toss-away character Dashwood, after the S&S sisters. The amateur theatricals come from Mansfield Park. The idea of a girl who makes a fool of herself by taking a particular novelist’s books too seriously comes from Northanger Abbey, which also has my favorite Austen hero–I have a huge crush on Henry Tilney, and Parr is much more like him than like Darcy. I’m not sure what I stole from Persuasion & Emma (besides the one-word title)–I’d be fascinated to hear what you found. All I’m aware of stealing from P&P is Mr. Collins (Seth) and the name of the boys’ school (Forefield Academy = Netherfield Hall). Oh, and the opening line.
 
LEENA: Now that I think of it, I must have been blind not to have noticed that the whole enthusiasm-for-novels scenario was an homage to Northanger Abbey! Of course. As for Persuasion and Emma, I suppose Parr’s poetry-writing made me think of Wentworth’s ‘You pierce my soul,’ etc. - and sometimes Julie and Ashleigh reminded me of Emma and Harriet, though I can’t decide which was which…
 
POLLY: That’s interesting–yes, of course, the word games and secret messages are all very Austen, and I see what you mean about Emma and Harriet.
 
LEENA: When did you become a Janeite, and was it Pride and Prejudice that did it? How much did the Jane Austen Epiphany change your life? Did it make you an enthusiast of the time period as well?
 
POLLY: P&P was my first taste of Austen. I read it when I was 13 or so. I remember shaking with vicarious shame and excitement when I got to the scene where Elizabeth reads Darcy’s letter. It was already late at night, but I couldn’t stop reading. I finished the book with dawn showing through the window. Boy, was I tired in school the next day.

But Austen didn’t change my relation to literature. I was always a passionate reader, ever since I first learned to read. And even as a child, I loved old books: Little Women, The Secret Garden, the E. Nesbit books, George Macdonald’s fairy tales.

At Yale, where I went to college, I would often procrastinate by reading 18th century novels by women. Gertrude Stein had left her library to Yale, and lots of her books were in the general circulating collection. She seems to have shared our taste for the stuff. There was something deliciously wicked about reading some obscure 18th century sentimental novel with Gertrude Stein’s bookplate in it when I was supposed to be doing my problem sets (I was a math major).

On writing:
 
LEENA: I read two great interviews with you on Looks Books and Kimberley’s Wanderings, and they covered the whole writing lark quite comprehensively…
 
POLLY: I think in one of those I talked a lot about a book I’m not working on after all. I was writing two books at once, that one and The Grimm Collection. I finally decided I would never finish either book if I went on trying to write both, so I asked my agent to sell one of them so I could have a deadline. So now The Grimm Collection is due very, very, very soon, and the other book is sitting in the proverbial sock drawer. (Nowadays writers keep their socks on their hard drives.)
 
LEENA: One thing that struck me was what you said about your good writer friend - and how you thrive on each other’s feedback. The relationship sounded so symbiotic. Can you tell us a little more about that?
 
POLLY: Well, we both send each other chunks of writing as soon as we’ve finished it–a chapter, or part of a chapter, or even a paragraph. Then we call each other and shriek words of encouragement. It makes the writing process fell less lonely–someone’s right there at the other end of the email box waiting to read what you’ve written.
 
Nevertheless, I don’t think I would be good at collaborating on fiction–I’m way too bossy and possessive about my stories and characters. It’s hard enough struggling with myself about how write my books. I would hate to have to struggle with someone else, too.
 
On the other hand, once I’ve finished something I try to be as cooperative as possible with my editor. I’ve been an editor myself all my working life, and I know how necessary editors are. No matter how good the writer is, there are things she can’t see about her own work because she’s too close to it. And I’m lucky enough to have a fantastic editor–smart, thoughtful, funny, with a great ear and a great sense of structure and pacing.
 
LEENA: Despite the numerous workshops and critique circles out there, people - especially writers themselves - never fail to emphasise what a solitary activity writing is. Sometimes it seems to me writers gather in online communities just to tell each other what loners they are. And yet writing can be very social and participatory; I’m thinking of early novelists who read their manuscripts out loud in the family circle, or for example Maria Edgeworth who claimed she couldn’t write at all without her father’s, and later her sisters’, participation. Perhaps much of the solitary nature of writing comes from subscribing the notion that what’s truly original and creative comes from within, and what comes from without is somehow compromised and less authentic?
 
POLLY: I don’t know. I think this might be different for different people. Some writers love to hang out with other writers and talk shop; others prefer to hide in a corner by themselves. And others, like me, prefer something in between.

Another reason I don’t find writing lonely is that when I write, I’m always in the company of my characters. That’s at least one person–often a crowd of six or seven–to share thoughts with, listen to, watch, argue with, worry about. I guess it could be lonely when it’s going badly and they don’t feel like real people, but when it’s going well, they’re all right there with me.
 
I’ve never been much interested in those interviews with writers where they tell you what kind of pen they use (I guess nowadays it would be what computer program) and whether they write in the morning or the middle of the night. I guess it might be reassuring for an aspiring writer to learn that a successful writer also likes to write in pencil on yellow legal pads, so the preference for pencil and yellow legal pads doesn’t automatically condemn you to a life of obscurity. Or perhaps you’d be relieved to know that you’re NOTHING like some awful hack because YOU use a Mac and HE uses a PC. But otherwise I don’t see why anyone would care that I like to lie on the sofa with my laptop and use Scrivener rather than Word and nibble the red part off radishes.
 
(Scrivener was a birthday present from a writer friend a couple of years ago. I love it. It has great tools to help you organize your thoughts, drafts, and research material.)

LEENA: Do tell us more about your plans for the future…
 
POLLY: Well, if the book I’m working on now and am almost done with–The Grimm Collection–is a smash hit, my publisher might want me to write a sequel. The Grimm Collection is about some high school students who have after-school jobs at The New-York Circulating Material Repository–a lending library, but instead of books they lend objects, such as dresses or musical instruments or woodworking tools. In the basement is a collection of objects that the Brothers Grimm gathered when they went around writing down fairy tales: Snow White’s stepmother’s mirror, a pair of seven-league boots, and so forth. So The Grimm Collection is about the magical adventures the kids get into with these objects, but the Repository also has other Special Collections that could be the subject of sequels: The Wells Bequest (science fiction objects), The Gibson Chrestomathy (cyber objects), and the Lovecraft Collection (don’t go down there!) (I might change the names.)
 
If nobody wants me to write a sequel right away, I have a ton of other ideas. I posted some of them on my website to see which would appeal to my readers. So far the most popular (maybe because I listed it first?) is a historical novel set in New York and Europe in the 1870s, about a 17-year-old who finds herself widowed very soon after her wedding and decides to go on the honeymoon anyway, touring Europe with her new sister-in-law and her husband’s cousin. That book is a prequel to Enthusiasm, it turns out: the heroine is the great-great-great grandmother of Grandison Parr, the hero of Enthusiasm.
 
LEENA: What advice would you give to aspiring writers?
 
POLLY: Here’s my advice for anyone who aspires to write: Write!

Also: Read!

Okay, the longer version: When you think of an interesting idea or a beautiful sentence, or a fruitful image, write it down. Some of what you write will be wonderful, and some of it will suck. Don’t be afraid of writing the bad stuff–that doesn’t make you a bad writer. All good writers write plenty of bad stuff. You can’t write the good stuff if you’re afraid to write because you might write bad stuff. Remember, you can always fix it later, or you can take what you learned from the experience and use it to write something better later. And keep at it. There’s nothing as heartening as actually finishing something you started.

The “Read!” part of the advice is pretty obvious, I guess. Read lots of books! I bet you already do that. Maybe the less obvious part is HOW to read. When you read something you like, think about how the writer achieved the effects that please you. When you read something you hate, think about what the writer did that made you have that reaction and think about how to avoid doing it in your own writing. And try to read a variety of stuff, not just the sorts of books you’re already familiar with, so you can learn about different techniques.

And finally:
 
LEENA: Please recommend five books, and tell us a little about the choices!

POLLY: Okay, let’s see.

1. Villette, by Charlotte Bronte. This was my favorite book growing up. It’s darker than Jane Eyre, with a heroine who loses what she loves over and over again amid an atmosphere of passionate restraint.

2. The Chrestomancy series, by my favorite fantasy writer, Diana Wynne Jones. I know, that’s more than five books, so start with–oh, let’s say Witch Week. It’s set in a school for the orphans of witches: in the world of the novel, magic real but illegal, a capital crime. Naturally, some of the students have inherited their parents’ talent. Like all Jones’s stories, Witch Week is hilarious, terrifying, and unpretentiously deep.

3. The poems of Marianne Moore. Wow, what that woman could do with words! She’s a wizard of structure and surprise.
 
4. Angela Carter’s The Magic Toyshop. This is a triumphantly fantastical gothic by one of my favorite writers, about a young woman imprisoned by her uncle, a puppet-maker whose toys aren’t always inanimate. There might be too much violence, incest, and assorted creepiness for some readers, but I loved it.
 
5. Muriel Spark’s A Far Cry from Kensington. I don’t usually like novels about novelists, but I adored this one. It’s about a depressed young woman coming into her own: part satire, part love story, part Bildungsroman.

Do visit Polly Shulman’s website at www.pollyshulman.com. And while you’re at it, there are reviews of Enthusiasm at:

• The Atomic Librarian
• Teen Book Review
• Oops… Wrong Cookie
• Slayground
• PaperCuts
• BookMoot
• TeensReadToo