Tahereh Mafi + Ransom Riggs in Manila!

I was scheduled to interview Tahereh Mafi (author of “Shatter Me,” “Unravel Me”) last Saturday prior to her bloggers’ forum at Powerbooks, and was delighted to find Ransom Riggs (author of “Miss Peregrine’s Home for Peculiar Children”), who had flown in with her, had come along to check out her events as well. When I asked if I could interview him with Tahereh, Ransom graciously agreed, so I had a lovely hour chatting with these two YA authors!

Doing a joint interview was a great idea, not just because of the limited time before the start of the bloggers’ forum, but also because Tahereh and Ransom are friends, so they were very candid the whole time! From their books to their writing, down to what they’ve experienced of the Philippines so far, we certainly had a lot to talk about, and it was an amazing experience.

Here’s a transcript of our interview (photos mostly from the blogger forum):

Q: Did you set out to become a writer? How did you get started writing?

TM: I’ve actually been a lifelong reader. I never thought I could write a book. Ever. I was not one of those authors who dreamt of being a writer their whole life. It wasn’t until after I graduated from college that I started reading a lot more young adult fiction, and that was the first time in my life when it had ever occurred to me that I might want to write a book and that was when I started writing — which is just a couple of years ago, actually.

RR: I wanted to be a writer when I was a little kid, I read a lot of Stephen King, Chronicles of Narnia and stuff, and then I kind of forgot about it and decided I wanted to make movies instead. And I did that for a bunch of years. I went to film school and I tried to make it in Hollywood, and I wrote screenplays. Then an opportunity came along to write a book, and I sort of remembered the thing that I loved to do but I had forgotten. So I kind of set out, but it was a weird, zigzaggy path.

I wanted to be a writer when I was a little kid, then I kind of forgot about it and decided I wanted to make movies instead… Then an opportunity came along to write a book, and I sort of remembered the thing that I loved to do but I had forgotten.

–  Ransom Riggs, on how he started writing

Q: Speaking of reading, what were your favorite books growing up? Your literary influences?

TM: I can’t say that I have any specific literary influences… I was a huge Harry Potter fan. Still am. We didn’t really have a lot of young adult fiction growing up. It’s probably the same in the Philippines, we share so much books and movies… We just had Judy Blume, J.K. Rowling, that’s kind of what I grew up on. Dr. Seuss, Shel Silverstein, [those are] my favorite books.

(Me: Those are all my favorites as well!)

RR: I really loved the Chronicles of Narnia. I got into all of these sort of magical realism kind of books, like “The Bridge to Terabithia,” and movies that had that same tone, like “Goonies” or “Flight of the Navigator,” the discovery of different worlds. And I really liked some mysteries for kids by John Bellairs… They made an impact on me — they were just, like, creepy but not gross, and really intriguing.

Q: Which other authors are you reading? 

TM: I try to read a little of everything. Some of my favorite authors are actually contemporary writers, like Stephanie Perkins  — “Anna and the French Kiss” and “The Boy Next Door” I love the happily ever after; Jandy Nelson wrote “The Sky is Everywhere” — it’s one of my favorite books. I also love the Unearthly series by Cynthia Hand, “Hallowed” just came out. It’s very contemporary-based but has a paranormal twist of her being an angel. I just discovered something about myself, that even though I’d never write contemporary, I love contemporary fiction.

(Me; I love contemporary fiction, too. I imagine it’s difficult to pull off — you don’t have any special effects to carry the story along.)

TM: I agree completely. And when it’s done well, it’s so heartwrenching because it’s so real.

RR: You can hide behind the fairy dust. But with contemporary you need to have strong characters and relationship and a strong voice or else it doesn’t work. And sometimes you do, but it still doesn’t work. )

RR: I need to read more YA. Right now, I’m reading a short story collection that I’ve been hearing a lot about for a long time. It’s called “Tenth of December” by George Saunders. The writing’s really extraordinary.

TM: It’s really gooood.

Q: How did you guys get your big break?

TM: I wrote five manuscripts before I wrote “Shatter Me.” All bad, all never published… I tried to publish all of those manuscripts. It was a long road. Lots of rejection, and then I got an agent, then that didn’t work out. She didn’t like “Shatter Me” — she wouldn’t even read it, wouldn’t sell it. So I had to find a new agent. So hundreds of rejections, two agents. It wasn’t an overnight thing. I wrote obsessively. Once I decided to start writing, I wrote a long time.

So this wasn’t an academic requirement?

This was just for fun. I was working full time. I worked at my alma mater, the university I graduated from, in philanthropy. We raised money to feed scholarships. I was like the in-house graphic designer for a very small department.

RR: I got really lucky. I had been pursuing film stuff, and then I started collecting old photographs, old vintage pictures because I’d always been into photography but I couldn’t afford the stuff that anyone knew, because they’re expensive. So I would find little wrinkled snapshots for a quarter apiece at street markets and I gave these to my editor. I had written a little non-fiction book called The Sherlock Holmes Handbook…

(Me: Wait a minute… Red cover with a silhouette of Sherlock in front? I have that book!!!)

That’s how I got the book to my publisher, Quirk Books. It’s a tiny little publisher that makes fun books like that, coffeetable books. They’d never done a novel before, but I showed them the photos that I had collected… My editor suggested I try and weave the story through the pictures, and so I went off and created the story that is in the book. My editor was like, “We’ll pay you to write a novel.” And I was like, “Really!?! Okay.”

So the photos must have been several months worth of collecting?

For me it was maybe 6 months, and then I got to meet other collectors, and they let me use their archives. Some photos came before [the text] and some came after, some came while I was writing. It’s a weird organic thing that just came together.

Q: Where did you get the inspiration for your novels? 

TM: A lot of people ask me, like where did I get the inspiration for “Shatter Me,” why did you write it like this… and I never have a good answer. I was just sitting at my desk one day and I was struck by the image of a girl and it was a very vivid image. But all I could see, really, was that she would curl into herself in a dark corner and she’s terrified and she’s been locked up for a crime she didn’t intend to commit. She was guilty but her intentions were good. And even though verbally she’s a very silent character at the beginning of the book, the inside of her head is so loud. It really was very compelling, and I could hear it, the way writers can hear people talk to them in their head, and it’s ,like, weird, right? I just decided to try and capture that on paper, and the first few chapters of “Shatter Me” as you read them today are exactly the same as they were when they found that I wrote something… The strikethrough, the weird sentence structure, the numbers… all that stuff. It was the first time that I allowed myself to let go of convention and just write the way the character felt in my head. I just wanted it to be authentic.

It was the first time that I allowed myself to let go of convention and just write the way the character felt in my head. I just wanted it to be authentic.

– Tahereh Mafi, on the inspiration for “Shatter Me”

The environment was something that I thought about a lot with respect to our own world because I feel like looking at everything that’s happening around the world, with so many natural disasters and so many health concerns and the weird things that are happening, like food that’s been genetically modified. I remember watching a documentary about fish that was developing both female and male reproductive organs because so much estrogen was being pumped into the rivers. I was like, whoa, that’s so crazy, what we’re doing is actually and really having and effect on the world. The world that Juliette lives in was really just me thinking what’s the worst possible scenario, of things going terribly wrong.

RR: I read a little bit of Old English mythology and the lore of the Welsh and Gaelic and Celtic people, and I didn’t really want to draw too much from it, but that world was really interesting… The ymbrines are based on the funniest bird names I could think of, like Miss Bunting, Miss Nightjar.

Did you set out to write YA?

I didn’t even know what it was until Barnes and Noble told me it was YA. They said if it were on a television, it would be for teenagers.

Did you intend for it to be as dark as it was?

No, it just came out that way.

Q: What is your writing process like? How do you guys churn out your words?

RR: Very different.

TM: We have very different writing processes.

So you’ve compared notes?

TM: We’ve worked at the same table.

RR: And we’ve fielded that question before.

TM: I have an extremely obsessive writing process that I’m trying to fix. I generally lock myself in my house for a few weeks at a time and I just write . Like all day, morning to night. Just write, write, write, write until I’m finished. And then I just sort of collapse.

RR: I wake up in the morning, and I write before breakfast. I write in 90-minute chunks throughout the day. So if I’ve gotten like 5 hours of writing done by the end of the day, that’s pretty good. Real actual work, because I can sit 10 hours in a chair but I could surf the internet for five of those hours.

I generally lock myself in my house for a few weeks at a time and I just write . Like all day, morning to night. Just write, write, write, write until I’m finished.

– Tahereh Mafi, on her writing process

 I write in 90-minute chunks throughout the day. So if I’ve gotten like 5 hours of writing done by the end of the day, that’s pretty good.

– Ransom Riggs, on his writing process

Q: (To Ransom) Is there a sequel to Miss Peregrine’s? 

Oh, yeah. I’m almost done. It’s coming out in January.

What can we look forward to in this book? 

RR: Lots of adventure…

TM: Kissing.

RR: Some kissing. I just sort of scratched the surface of what that world is. It’s not just an island, there’s a whole world of peculiars and ymbrines, and they discover some of that.

TM: There’s three books, it’s a trilogy with two novellas. The first one, “Destroy Me,” came in between the first and second books, and the second novella comes in between the second and third books.

Were the novellas planned?

TM: My publisher’s suggested it actually. They wanted me to write the first novella. They wanted me to write something. They suggested a prequel, which I was not a fan of. I wanted to write something that actually happened in the story. So it was my suggestion to write “Destroy Me” and to write from Warner’s point of view.

Q: How did this trip to the Philippines come about? 

RR: We’ve both been travelling a fair amount together. She got invited here by National Book Store.

TM: I was like, hey, you should come too!

RR: I was like, OK, let me ask my publisher to ask some people.

Q: How has your experience of the country been so far? 

TM: It’s just stunning. I feel like it’s so colorful and so interesting. And it’s so similar to being in the States, except with an interesting twist, everything’s just so colorful and interesting. We’ve been to the mall, and it had the nicest stores. That was the nicest mall I’ve ever been in.

RR: I really love jeepneys. I could look at them all day. They’re so cool.

TM: He’s taken, like, 500 pictures of jeepneys.

RR: They have beautiful art on them, and they’re all different. We’re also going down to Palawan.

TM: We’re going to El Nido!

Q. YA is really big here in the Philippines, but very little YA is published locally. What advice would you give for writers who want to break into this genre?

RR: Just write. I feel like a lot of people feel like they need permission to write, and they spend a lot of time looking at examples and asking around, they spend a lot of time talking about how to write rather than just doing it, which is the only way to go about it. Just dive in.

TM: That’s super true. There’s no such thing as a bad book. That’s not true technically, but what I’m trying to say is that there’s no thing as a failed book. I mean, I wrote a lot before I wrote a book that actually got me published, and I learned something from each one of those experiences. Each book that I wrote and technically failed at taught me how to write a book that would actually, sell. This sounds super super cheesy, but I always tell anyone who’s an aspiring writer and is looking for advice, that they should never give up. I really truly, believe that the only difference between a published an unpublished writer is time.

Just write. I feel like a lot of people feel like they need permission to write, and they spend a lot of time looking at examples and asking around. They spend a lot of time talking about how to write rather than just doing it, which is the only way to go about it. Just dive in.

– Ransom Riggs, advice to writers

Never give up. I really truly, believe that the only difference between a published an unpublished writer is time.

– Tahereh Mafi, advice to writers

So, this is me, hanging out with Tahereh and Ransom:

Squee!

And of course, I got my books signed.

Tahereh’s such a doll, we have so many favorite books in common, and I can’t believe she has a book series at 23! I love her guilelessness, and she just  projects this delighfully positive aura that makes her such a pleasure to talk to.

And Ransom’s really intense, much like his novel. I did not know I was going to get to meet him, much less interview him this weekend, and it was such an awesome bonus. I had no idea what Ransom had signed on my book, as I actually did not get to see it until later at dinner that night, when one of the Flippers asked to see it at dinner and read it aloud to me.

I must say that’s really not true; there are so many brilliant Filipino book bloggers out there (I was actually in awe of the young bloggers that attended Tahereh’s blogger’s forum later that afternoon, because they’re so passionate and so young, and that’s really inspiring), and at this point my major concern is really trying to balance my workload (and extracurriculars) and blog at the same time.

But yes, I echo the “great meeting you part” because this interview with Ransom and Tahereh is one of my most fascinating and memorable interviews to date, and a lovely reminder that this is one of the things I’ve enjoyed immensely in my experience as a book blogger.

I read Miss Peregrine’s last year (I have a few paragraphs drafted for the review, but that still needs some work) and I think I’ll get to finish
Shatter Me this week, so hopefully you’ll get to see my reviews of these books soon.

It was a perfect bookish Saturday, capped off with the Flips Flipping Pages’ discussion of Ender’s Game by Orson Scott Card (which I co-moderated), dinner with the Flippers (not to mention a four and a half hour session of the Battlestar Galactica game). I’m trying to finish at least two more Ender books, so we’ll save Ender’s Game — the discussion and the review — for another time. :)

***

Special thanks to National Book Store & Powerbooks for arranging this interview.
“Shatter Me” and “Miss Peregrine’s Home for Peculiar Children” are available at National Book Store.