Today I'm interviewing a guest writer, Margaret Fieland.
Margaret, Thanks for being here. Have you had anything published?
Quite a lot of poetry – see press kit on my website – http://www.margaretfieland.com/ a couple of children's stories, one or two stories for adults. My first book, a chapter book, will be published by 4RV publishing in early 2012 http://4rvpublishingllc.com/
My first book , which is about a boy who loses his mother in a fire, grew out of an incident many years ago where an acquaintance lost his wife and four children in a fire. The present book was pretty much because I'm an amateur musician and I wanted to write about that.
I have a file of story ideas I'd like to work on. A lot of them grow out of my reading fiction, where I find myself saying, “But what happens AFTER the end of the book? Just suppose that ...”
You've written some middle grade fiction. How did you make the decision to write for that audience?
{Grin} As a poet I'm pretty terse .. I started writing for kids initially because, first, it seemed less intimidating that writing for adults, and second, it seemed to require fewer words. Little did I know. In a lot of ways, writing for kids is more demanding than writing for an adult audience. But I fell into writing MG fiction and it somehow feels right.
Can you tell the readers a little bit about your story?
It's about a girl whose parents are divorcing and who wants to go to music camp. She starts out playing the flute, but ends up taking up the bassoon. This was at the suggestion of a friend of mine who is a middle school music director .. bassoons are in demand and get scholarships.
Unlike fantasy, your story deals with divorce, a very real drama. What, if any, are the challenges of writing about something that so many readers will have had personal experience with?
You know, I started writing about the “real-life trauma” stuff in order to deal with my own feelings around a real-life incident. In the process, I discovered that this kind of fiction for the MG group is rather under-represented. It felt like a golden opportunity to me.
But I do feel that I need to tread a delicate line between glossing over the real-life problems that the kids in my story face and presenting too bleak a view.
Who’s your favorite author and/or book?
My all-time favorite book is “Alice in Wonderland”/”Through the Looking Glass” by Lewis Carroll. I used to reread it every exam time when I was in college, as I would forgo trips to the library and would begin to suffer from book deprivation.
Do you have any writing related thoughts you’d like to share?
When I consider my fiction writing, I'm struck by the serendipity that led me to it in the first place. At the time I started writing fiction, I wasn't really “interested” in it, but the opportunity presented itself, so I took the plunge.
Then, too, getting my writing organized and accessible in the first place was a huge piece of what started me down the road to taking myself seriously as a writer. If I were still scribbling in notebooks I tossed in a corner, I'd have no perspective on my writing and I'd never have taken myself seriously as a writer. Yes, I've worked hard on my craft as a writer, but none of it would have happened if I hadn't started getting organized.
Thanks for the interview, Margaret. I hope your book does well.
(If you're interested in books and writing, here's another writer whose blog you might want to visit tomorrow http://katiehines.blogspot.com.
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