Imaginary Girls: a Q&A with Nova Ren Suma
When I was a teenager I posted a picture from a Mary Engelbreit calendar on Kate's bedroom door. BE KIND TO THY SISTER, it says (it's still up there). Not many may know the depths of true sisterly love. And in the narrow white space above the illustration I wrote, HINT HINT! But my sister doesn't need the hint. We are grateful for each other every day.You may recall that I know Nova Ren Suma from our time at Yaddo last spring. I loved her even before we met in person, and her relationship with her little sister is a big part of why. It was something we had in common--Nova knows the depths, and her brand-new novel, Imaginary Girls, proves it. This lovely, haunting, heartbreaking novel simply could not have been written by a girl without a sister.
They forgot who she was:Something fantastic we could never explain. Someone better and bolder than every one of us. Someone to paint murals and build bridges for. Someone worth every ounce of our love.
So I've got two treats to offer up this fine Monday morning: a copy of Imaginary Girls (which Nova signed over dinner last week) and a Q&A with my friend the author. As you can see, Nova managed to pack a whole lot of awesomeness into only three questions!:1. Do you have any special writerly rituals and/or superstitions?I can be a bit superstitious about writing, and much of it has to do with a great and everlasting fear that all of this will disappear and no longer be "real." I don't like talking about novels in detail out loud before I'm sure they're going to be published. I think I learned my lesson--it felt so at the time--from talking about novels-in-progress before, or talking about an agent request, or something that felt "real" but turned out to burst into nothingness. So I keep my novels close until I feel it's okay to talk about them out loud, because I just don't know. (Really, you never know.)My writerly rituals have included writing with a scarf over my head, like a laptop-size tent, writing forward and never letting myself skip around--a rule I've since broken with the novel I'm writing now that I can't talk too much about since... you know why--and the usual caffeine-related routines to jump start the pages. Fact is, I could use a few magic rituals for when I'm feeling stalled... Taking suggestions! 2. Which do you feel is the very best line you've ever set to paper?A very long time ago, before I published a novel, I wrote a blog post about a paragraph that "I'd save from a burning building." By this I meant that it was the best thing I'd ever written, and out of the 500-page monstrous manuscript otherwise known as my first attempt at writing a novel, it was the only thing I couldn't live without saving. You can read my passionate treatise on the paragraph here. I felt so strongly about that paragraph, so deeply in love with it, that I vowed I'd do something with it.Maybe I wrote that whole novel only for this single paragraph, I told myself. I can't let it die.But... I did let it die. I had to. I had to move on and write other novels. (I hope readers of your blog remember your beautiful, important post about letting go of early novels.)So I think that paragraph I blogged about may be the best thing I've ever written, since I've never felt so confident about a piece of writing before or since. And maybe this unknown and unpublished paragraph feels more beautiful because I can't now find it on my hard-drive, even though I just went searching. Maybe that's how it's meant to be: the best thing I've ever written is a mystery even to me. 3. Desert island reading list. Five titles. Go!The Last Life by Claire Messud--I never tire of rereading this novelInvisible Cities by Italo Calvino--I could read this a hundred thousand times and always discover something newThe Bloody Chamber by Angela Carter--so lush and twisted, I want to read this again and again and againA collection of Alice Munro short stories--comfort foodAnd, especially as this one might give me some useful survival tips, Beauty Queens by Libba Bray [Ed: Funny thing--well, not really, because the book is amazing--The Bloody Chamber is on Deirdre's desert island reading list as well. Mine too. And thanks for all the other great recommendations, Nova!]
Nova's doing a blog tour (in which she reveals secrets related to the book--so fun!) through July 1st, so you can read more about Imaginary Girls on each blog along the tour and on her website. You can also read an excerpt here. And if you don't already follow her on Twitter (@novaren) or have her blog on your reader, you should definitely add it--you writers especially. Her posts are always thought-provoking and inspiring on that front.So to enter this giveaway, just leave a comment and tell me about something you've loved and lost (whether it's a friendship, a special piece of jewelry, something you once wrote and were really proud of...anything!) I'll leave it open through the end of the day on Wednesday, June 29th, then use the random number generator thingamabob. Good luck and enjoy!