I had the immense pleasure of reading Mattingly's Journey a few months ago and interviewing her regarding the genesis and process of creating her latest tale. What you'll read first is my Q & A with Kathryn followed by my thoughts on Journey.
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Tell me about the journey of Journey – from how the idea struck you, your process of writing it, any research, struggles along the way, beta-readers, all the way to the finished book. How many drafts did it take? Did anything change drastically (avoiding spoilers) from first draft to final?
This story has evolved quite a bit from conception. When the idea first came to me it was because of all the press about runaway teens. Like all writers with runaway imaginations I wondered about different scenarios and what-ifs surrounding circumstances that would cause a teen to runaway. That gave me my basic plot. What I really write about in all my books is what makes people tick, what drives them to do what they do leading up to and well beyond one action such as running away from home. The plot is just the glue to hold all those intricate psychological and emotional fibers together.
My writing process is simply spilling out the guts of the story onto paper. Then I slowly transform and finesse that raw unfiltered thinking and emotion into something (hopefully) refined. To me refinement is when it sings and dances on the page instead of trudging along clunkily amid too many adjectives and over-thinking. There should be an easy rhythm that allows the reader to seamlessly follow one scene and thought to another without ever getting confused, bored, or bogged down by bad mechanics, inconsistencies, and repetitions. This is not to say a reader will never take pause to ponder what has affected them along the way in terms of a new perspective or overwhelming emotion.
I have been fortunate enough to spend a fair amount of time in Maui and on The Big Island, which is where Journey takes place. My locations are always somewhere I have lived or travelled, and whatever my characters thought processes or emotions are, I have also experienced. This is not to say I have experienced everything my characters have, but only to say I have experienced something similar which allows me to relate to them. This keeps research about everything in my books to a minimum. Rule number one is to write what you know, and so I do.
I don’t use Beta-readers. Once I believe that the manuscript has evolved all that it can I send it to a few trusted colleagues for reader input. These are long time author friends whom I respect for their work, intuitiveness and insight regarding all written work. I soak up their suggestions for how the story may still need to evolve or could be made tighter, clearer, better. After I rework it using their input, I send it to a couple excellent line editors that I know and respect personally for their expertise in this area. This whole process from start to finish can take a year or 10 years depending on that particular story.
I have to be honest: In the beginning I felt a little frustration with Kylie – out of nowhere she became incredibly hell-bent on finding her niece and making this child she never knew a part of her life, even though she knew nothing of Alana outside of the letter she reads from her recently-deceased sister. My question is was I supposed to feel that way? You write complex characters and they’re not black and white, which makes me think I was supposed to wonder why she acts the way she does – of course through the book we gain a much greater understanding of Kylie and her marriage and life. Give me your take on Kylie, and what was her life like before the book begins?
All of my heroines have a Scarlet O’Hara from Gone With The Wind angst about them. You love to hate my protagonist for her need to control and manipulate the ‘floor has fallen out from under me’ environment she suddenly finds herself in. But then again, underneath your frustration with her obsessive-compulsive behavior toward a seemingly contrived outcome you find yourself loving her for the motives she displays, which are always about saving someone (or several someone’s) from what she perceives to be a disastrous fate and future for that particular individual.
Most of us can also relate to the bad choices made before good decision making, but we fully understand how this is the process to success- learning from our poorly executed and impulsive, short sighted plans. Watching and wondering how this process will unfold, I believe, is what draws you in and makes you turn the page.
As for what Kylie’s life and marriage is like before the start of the book and for that matter, after the last written page is up to the reader. I would take it one step further and say that everything Kylie was and is and can ever hope to be is something each of us must determine for ourselves based on our own personal relationships, world view, aspirations, frustrations, achievements and failures.
We writers all have piles of work that no one will ever read – it’s a sad truth that we spend a lot of time (months, years even) on work that doesn’t get beyond the first draft and ends up being a “trunk novel.” Tell me about one of your “trunk novels” and would you ever consider revisiting/revising it?
My ‘trunk novel’ is my first novel on which I cut my teeth… ALL of my teeth – one painful day at a time for what seemed like forever. After being consumed by a whirlwind of passion to pen the story so vivid in my mind, I soon realized it was a muddled mess. This realization came after taking it to writing conferences filled with best-selling novel speakers, and attending retreats where I had icon authors, masters at their trade, teach me what I thought I knew and yet didn’t have a clue about. I rewrote it numerous times and finally, a compassionate editor at a conference gently informed me that my plot was as uninteresting and ordinary as my characters and scenery were fascinating and extraordinary.
It was like a light went on in my head as he spoke. He was absolutely right. I had lost the forest for the trees. I put it on a shelf and never looked back, and immediately wrote a brand new novel that had been simmering in the back of my head. The very next year I won an award for that manuscript and landed a New York agent with the JC Literary Agency. That book was Benjamin – my debut novel.
I know writers don’t like the “what’s next” question, but do you have ideas down already, saved in a journal or notebook, or do you wait and let the ideas come organically?
I have a file of plots and characters, written when they come to mind- usually after just enough wine, but not too much wine. It’s a magical place where the imagination knows no limits – and for that matter, life has no limits in that moment of not completely sober but not inebriated either. I think every creative person on earth has been to the sweet spot of which I speak. It’s fleeting, but the mind does take flight in that space, where all my novels have been birthed. My next two projects are completed books that I will perfect before publication at one a year, and then my new work will see the light of day- a dark and scary thought, because like all good fiction- the truth is in the lie. Most nonfiction I read is more fictitious than the sobering truth of courageously crafted fiction.
That knowledge alone is reason enough for a fiction writer to keep a well-stocked wine cellar.
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My review:
To be frank, Kathryn Mattingly is far more eloquent with words than I. Journey is simply, and profoundly, damn good writing. A tragedy early on, along with a letter, provides the springboard into an emotional page-turner that finds our heroine, Kylie, challenging the life she’s been occupying against a life she could have – one she wants. Mattingly’s story of a woman refusing to be denied her chance at experiencing some semblance of motherhood draws you in and forces you to think, to feel.
This is no easy-breeze beach novel you can just flip casually through unaffected. Mattingly makes you pause, makes you wonder, makes your heart clench up, and challenges you with her characters. We feel their pain, their anger, their surprise, and can sympathize in one way or another. With Journey, Mattingly proves herself an extremely gifted storyteller fully capable of weaving difficult choices, complex emotions, and painful secrets all against the beautiful backdrops of sunny Maui.
Journey is available now at all major booksellers.
Links: Amazon, Barnes & Noble
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