Lily King Interview

Dear Reader,

This week's blog is not a book review, but an interview with author, Lily King. I have reviewed all four of her books this past month (November, 2018): The Pleasing Hour, The English Patient, Father of the Rain and Euphoria. All four are excellent, but Father of the Rain is my favorite book (ever!).

I emailed Ms. King eleven questions about her books and writing process, and she kindly emailed the responses below. These are written in her own words (I changed the order of two of the questions). Her answers give such insight into her books and her writing process.

It has been such a pleasure to spend this past month with Ms. King, and I hope that her books make an appearance on your To Read list soon.

Happy Reading!

Abby

Questions:

1. In the book, The Year of Yes, Shonda Rhimes describes the “hum” she gets when she's writing. The “hum” is the feeling she gets when she feels like the pieces are falling into place and she’s happy with what she’s written and created. Do you experience that “hum” when you write?

Absolutely. And very rarely. Most of it feels like bushwhacking, especially the first draft. It’s not exactly a hum then, more of a screech. For me the real hum comes later when I can feel the book’s shape and am working to accentuate it. But if you don’t feel the hum (or the screech), it doesn’t mean you’re writing badly. I think the more you can avoid attaching emotions to the process the better. I try hard not to judge what I’ve written (and fail at this, daily). If you can enjoy the process, the flow you get into when you are in deep with your characters, without a lot of judgment about quality (that comes later, when you have more perspective), it all goes much better.

2. Are you writing a new book? If so, can you tell us something about it?

I just handed in a draft of a new novel to my editor. Right now it’s called Writers & Lovers but that may change. It’s about a young woman trying to become a writer (and a lover, after some bad relationships) with a lot of things stacked against her.

3. What is your favorite book and/or author? Why?

Impossible question! If I do the desert island test, then I’d have to go with Virginia Woolf because she offers such a variety of work, so many different ways that she expressed her genius. And I’m still discovering her. I recently read Night and Day for the first time and was surprised by everything about it. I always thought that you had to give up sex when you read her—I mean you had to give up hoping for sex or sexual impulses (there’s the magnificent Sally Seton kiss by the urn in Mrs. Dalloway but it’s more a wistful memory than truly lustful) on her pages, but Night and Day was all about sexual attraction. In the end I just like reading her sentences more than any others.

4. You do such an incredible job with character development in your novels that you must spend an awful lot of time just getting to know your characters. Do you have a method for getting to know them?

Thank you! If a character is not crystal clear to me right away, I will sometimes write their autobiography in their voice, starting with "I was born…” and ending when the book starts. It helps me hear them and know them and discover all sorts of small things about their lives that I may or may not end up using.

5. Do you have a favorite character you have written about? If so, why is this person your favorite?

No. Well, actually, that’s not true. I think I love Andrew Bankson best of all. He’s the narrator of Euphoria. I feel sort of guilty admitting that in public. He was just such a delight. He took over that novel and changed it irreparably. I was so surprised by my instant connection to him. It was just so easy to hear him and understand his emotional state. I really enjoyed writing in his voice from the very start. That doesn’t often happen. It can feel so clunky at first, starting up the engine of a new voice. But he was just there. I didn’t have to fight to find him.

6. Of your four books, which one do you like best? Why?

No, in this case I do not have a favorite. They’re each so different and come from such different periods of my life. I can’t pit them against each other as reviewers do.

7. Did you always know that you wanted to write? Do you have tips for the writers out there? Time management? Tips for keeping your storyline together?

I did always know I wanted to write. It was always there. I didn’t actually think I’d become a “writer.” I think I used those air quotes well into my forties. I didn’t really come from a family that went after their dreams. So I’m still sort of startled it happened. My tips are stop judging your work and keep writing. Pick your most productive time of day to write and shape the rest of your life around that, no excuses. Stop all the excuses. Write at least 5 days a week. (I take weekends off and have been doing that ever since my kids were born.) As for the storyline, I make a timeline just so I know what happens when. I don’t necessarily tell it in that order but at least I have a sense of the whole. But I rarely know more than a few things that will happen when I start a book. I write the plot as I go, more or less, though I do often know the mood of the ending.

8. Talk to us about sex. Each of your books has a few sex scenes included in the story. Not many authors choose to include in this in their story line. Is this writing an organic process for you or do you plan it out? Do you have a specific intention in including the sex scenes?

Let’s be frank here. I write about bad sex. The good sex is often fade to black. It’s the bad sex I seem to describe. I don’t know why. Maybe because most people don’t. Good sex is like happy families—all alike.

9. I know that you are from Massachusetts. Can you describe how living in this area of the country influences your writing?

I do always seem to go back there. My newest is set in Cambridge, Mass. I would like it not to be—I’ve lived in so many places outside of New England in my adult life—but it wouldn’t budge from there. It gets in your bones. I have lived in Maine now for sixteen years and I love it so much here, but I still haven’t written about it very much. One short story. I think Massachusetts will always be my gravitational center.

10. Can you tell us about the names of your books and how you came up with them?

The Pleasing Hour was originally Plaire, a fictional town in France where it is partially set, but everyone thought they heard Player so I changed it.

The English Teacher was about a high school English teacher. No one could come up with a better title. And everyone, including me, slips and calls it The English Patient.

Father of the Rain came to me before I had written a word of the book. It’s in a line of The Book of Job. I got it from a tome of quotations when I looked up the word “father.” It jumped out at me. It’s the only title no one tried to get me to change.

I was about thirty pages into a first draft when I wrote the word “euphoria" in a line of dialogue and stopped. I flipped back to the first page of the notebook and wrote at the top “Euphoria" and underlined it. I had my title. There was a big campaign at my publishing house to change it, and I came up with about ten different titles but no one liked them any better and we’d all gotten used to Euphoria by then, so it stayed.

They want me to change Writers & Lovers now. My editor and I shrug. We know how that goes.

11. What do you like to do when you're not writing?

Alas, not very original stuff. Hang out with my family. We play a lot of cards and watch movies and read and drink tea. I like to run and play tennis and see the ocean as much as possible. I volunteer at a writing center called The Telling Room in Portland, Maine, a fantastic organization which has been near and dear to my heart for over a decade.