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| Photo credit: Girl Well Read and Ben McNally Books. Do not use without written permission. |
Ben McNally Books and Doubleday Canada hosted Erin Morgenstern to discusses her new novel,
The Starless Sea, the highly anticipated follow-up to her 2011 bestseller
The Night Circus. The event took place in Toronto at the Isabel Bader Theatre where Morgenstern took the stage for a reading. Erin was then joined by Ajay Fry to discuss the inspiration behind the book, her writing process, and answer questions from the audience.
Erin has special ties to Canada—she got her first passport to come to Toronto for
The Night Circus book tour
and she met her husband here. If she was to list her favourite things about Canada, half of them would be food!
Are you inspired by symbolism in including it, or do you find symbolism as you are writing?
"I knew I wanted to start with symbols for this one, partially because I like a very strong visual language and
The Night Circus clearly has a very strong visual language and it has a colour scheme," Erin said. She also wanted the same for
The Starless Sea, but not start with the colours, but with symbols. Erin created a running list of symbols she might use, and from there she focused on the key, the bee, and the sword which became the main motif. "Symbols are for interpretation and not definition."
What did you draw upon for inspiration?
"It's very much a book about stories and I though I was writing a book about books when I first started," Erin mused. She wanted to write a story about books and used this as her jumping off point. The idea of a story, as opposed to a book, is a malleable sort of thing. What is the story?
Your protagonist is someone who is interested in video games, were you trying to write a Choose Your Own Adventure type story?
It takes Erin a long time to figure out what exactly she is writing. She knew Zachary was a grad student and that he was studying something story related, but she wanted something different. This is where the game theory/game design piece comes in. The idea of which version of the story is the actual story (choices within choices) reminded Erin of the retelling of old stories or myths.
The Starless Sea felt old and new at the same time (the video game element was the new feel).
How difficult is the editing process?
Erin can't get overly attached to what she writes because there is a 50/50 chance of the material making it into the final version. "It allows me to write more and take more chances, where I can push things, and not settling on the first try." Her first draft is a trepidatious draft. Once the words are there, she can go back over it, make it stronger, and find the pieces that work—but during that process, she throws a lot away.
Where does The Starless Sea come from?
"I actually don't remember," Erin joked. She has a lot of imaginary architecture in her head and has always envisioned an underground libraryesque space. It is not an actual library because there are no librarians. "If it doesn't have a librarian, is it really a library?" There are bits and pieces that she wrote easily ten years ago—she didn't know where they were going, but that they belonged to this space. To come up with the narrative, Erin needed to take her time and explore the space and figure out who the people are that occupy said space and what their stories are.
What is the most rewarding feedback you get?
"I feel like the most rewarding feedback is when people have tattoos." Erin admitted that even though she loves tattoos, that she doesn't have any because she doesn't have anything that she relates to/reacts to that strongly.
What sparked your fascination with stories to begin with?
Erin was an overactive, imaginative, artsy kid and so she gave Zachary one of the qualities that she had as a kid which was to read in her closet—she wanted to be that immersed in the work without distractions. She was also a theatre kid (creative theatre) and even got her degree in theatre. Erin studied light and design, acted and directed, and wanted to pursue theatre professionally. This has come in very handy when she is writing—she has a very theatrical vision about the way a room is lit, what is smells like, how she stages things, and she gets to play all the roles. It is more fun for her to approach it this way, but because Erin is very visual, she struggles finding the right words so that her readers can experience what she is seeing. Erin admitted to using thesaurus.com a lot.
Another thing she struggles with is the rhythm of the prose and how it needs to sound lyrical. "I don’t know what I’m doing with commas, but I know how it needs to sound."
What is that when you spend so much time doing a solitary thing and then go out and be face-to-face?
"Being alone with this book for so long in the imaginary space in my head, it takes on a life of its own." The book was very meaningful to Erin, but the point is for it to be read, and for the reader to have an experience with it. She can’t have that same experience with all of the false starts and things in her head, so she tries to imagine what the reader experiences, but that is individual and unique—each reader will have their own reactions.
What advice would have given yourself?
“Calm it down,” Erin quipped. Her advice to herself would be to strike the right balance because sometimes she writes for herself and sometimes she writes for the book.
When is your next book coming out?
Her next book is literally a 3,000 Word document of notes and weird phrases—it isn’t anything close to resembling a story.
Writing process
"You need to put the words on the paper, that’s the tricky part." She tricks her brain that the work is worth pursing by writing late at night (and sometimes she has wine). In the early stages, Erin says that you have to find a way to stop doubting yourself and viewing the writing as work. "I will pretend I’m not really working and work at odd times of the day, or really really late at night because my inner editor, my self-doubt voice, goes to bed before the rest of me," Erin said. "You have to play games with yourself and you have to figure out what works for your own personal process." She was always a reader before becoming a writer. A finished book is looks so nice and she thought that as a writer you would start and the beginning and write to the end and then stop. Change a few commas here and there. But that isn't how she works. "I think you don’t get to see the messy stages of the process, you don’t get to see the false starts, you can only hope that someone talks about them." When you go to a theatrical production, you know there was a rehearsal, or when you look at a painting you know there are many layers over sketches, but as a reader, you don’t see the process behind the finished product, it can only be imagined.
She writes in short vignettes that are self-contained. This comes in handy when she does revisions because she can omit whole parts and can layer different plot elements.
When in doubt, just add Ninjas!
How would you describe The Starless Sea?
"I thought I was writing a book about books and then it turned into a book about stories. But at its core it's a story about a guy names Zachary Ezra Rawlings who is a grad student in Vermont and when he was about 11, he found a magic painted door and if he had opened it, it would have led him to this magical space, and he didn't. What if you didn’t follow the rabbit down the rabbit hole? What if you didn't test the structural integrity of the back of your wardrobe? Do you think about that years later, does the rabbit haunt you?"
What does the editing process actually look like?
Erin starts with a letter from her editor (that makes her mad) of the big picture things that are not working. She reads through the letter twice and then she throws the letter away—if it is important enough, she will remember. She goes back into her document and starts with writing new things, the sections that need a rewrite. By focusing on the new material, it removes her from the existing material and she can be more objective with it and remove what isn't working.
Scribner is the program that Erin uses to write. It enables her to organize pieces of the story on a bite size level which makes it possible for her to be able to layer the new pieces over the old.
Final words
Erin thanked us all for coming. "Yay, Canada!" But also to Ben McNally Books which makes a blink-and-you'll-miss-it cameo in the book via the intersection of Bay and King.
The Starless Sea
A timeless love story set in a secret underground world—a place of pirates, painters, lovers, liars, and ships that sail upon a starless sea.
Zachary Ezra Rawlins is a graduate student in Vermont when he discovers a mysterious book hidden in the stacks. As he turns the pages, entranced by tales of lovelorn prisoners, key collectors, and nameless acolytes, he reads something strange: a story from his own childhood. Bewildered by this inexplicable book and desperate to make sense of how his own life came to be recorded, Zachary uncovers a series of clues—a bee, a key, and a sword—that lead him to a masquerade party in New York, to a secret club, and through a doorway to an ancient library hidden far below the surface of the earth.
What Zachary finds in this curious place is more than just a buried home for books and their guardians—it is a place of lost cities and seas, lovers who pass notes under doors and across time, and of stories whispered by the dead. Zachary learns of those who have sacrificed much to protect this realm, relinquishing their sight and their tongues to preserve this archive, and also of those who are intent on its destruction. Together with Mirabel, a fierce, pink-haired protector of the place, and Dorian, a handsome, barefoot man with shifting alliances, Zachary travels the twisting tunnels, darkened stairwells, crowded ballrooms, and sweetly soaked shores of this magical world, discovering his purpose—in both the mysterious book and in his own life.
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ERIN MORGENSTERN is the author of the number-one national best seller of
The Night Circus that has been sold around the world and translated into thirty-seven languages. She has a degree in theatre from Smith College.
Morgenstern lives in Massachusetts.
