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AOTW: Where do your ideas come from? Do you rely on traditional mythology or folklore as a foundation for your books? If so, how do you research those subjects? Does the Internet ever come in handy?
Tamora Pierce: Ah, the idea question. I can certainly see where a lot of mine come from when I list the books and writers that stand out in my mind, those to which I returned repeatedly, prior to my discovery of fantasy: Thor Heyerdahl's KON-TIKI, an encyclopedia of fairy tales (including the unexpurgated Grimm stories, with doves pecking out Cinderella's stepsisters' eyes), Edgar Rice Burroughs' Mars books, Louisa May Alcott's entire oeuvre for girls, Zane Grey, Mark Twain, Howard Pyle's renditions of the King Arthur and Robin Hood adventures, Dumas' The Three Musketeers and sequels, Robert Graves' versions of the Greek myths and legends (*much* more instructive than Hamilton's or Bulfinch's), The Iliad, The Odyssey, Eloise McGraw's Mara: Daughter of the Nile, Brink's Caddie Woodlawn, Forbes' Johnny Tremaine, Stevenson's Treasure Island (with one of the best casts of villains in all fiction) . . . For the most part, I read adventure for boys (and moved on to even more adventure and swashbuckling as well as fantasy and science fiction as a teenager), and saw no reason why girls shouldn't be doing
these things, too.
Starting with The Iliad and The Odyssey in fourth grade, I became obsessed with myths and legends. I deepened my knowledge of Egyptian and Greco-Roman mythology, expanded into Norse myth, and have been roaming world myth, legend, and folklore ever since. My dad saw to it that I got my basic grounding in American folklore. And it's certainly easy to see that I borrow heavily from those sources now, from the not-so-subtle Mithros and Great Goddess of the books set in my Tortallan universe to the male/female paired deities of the Living Circle religion in my Circle of Magic universe, including Mila of the Grain and the Green Man as the gods of the earth and the north (as well as farming, weaving and gardening), and Shurri Firesword and Hakkoi the Smith, gods of the south and of fire (as well as justice, armies, law, and glassblowers). The father of the female hero of my second quartet is a dead ringer for the Celtic god Herne, though I gave him a different name. I have a weakness for tricksters like the Graveyard Hag of my seventh book, a cross between the Crone and Baron Samedi, the voodoo god of the crossroads and graveyards, and Lakik the Trickster of the Circle universe, who has no problem giving his constituents good luck and bad. In the book I'll be doing for Random House after Lady Knight, yet another trickster will be making the lead character's life interesting, primarily because he's bored and the Goddess has mentioned how easy it is to work with this character's family.
For most of my religious/folklore research I rely on a collection of books of gods and folklore, built up over time. It's relatively light for those gods I know best, and leans more heavily toward materials on Hindi, Asian, Pacific, and Native American myths and legends, where I'm less sure of my ground. If I got stuck in this area, I'd be more inclined to yell for help from my friend Josepha Sherman, who is a stone folklorist in addition to her talents as a writer (she actually has a degree in this stuff), than to turn to the Internet.
This doesn't mean I don't use the Internet --- au contraire. The Infobahn has bailed me out on a number of occasions, whether it's a matter of grabbing information about glaciers, academic studies of the behavioral patterns of serial arsonists, or a prolonged raid of the S.C.A. sites for contacts and ideas.
Meredith Ann Pierce: My ideas, just like dreams, seem to come from everywhere. Every now and then I can recognize the origin or inspiration for some element that comes to mind. (For example, I know that the relentless circular motion and sense of menace associated with the multiple wings of one of my evil characters called the darkangel comes from having had to sleep as a child in a room with a huge, fairly slow-turning exhaust fan that literally filled one window of the room. The fan didn't blow. It drew. Drew you toward it. All night long, waking or sleeping, you could feel that faint, inexorable pull. I realize now that it was supposed to keep the upper floor of our un-air-conditioned house cool in summer, but at the time I just found it ghastly and horrible. Every night, my mom would kiss us kids goodnight, turn out the light, turn on The Fan, and leave. The light from the streetlamp outside threw the shadow of those slowly turning fan-blades on the wall, so that even if you turned your back to The Fan, you could still see its shadowy image, magnified, upon the wall. The sense of helplessness and dread that the character Aeriel experiences when she first sees the shadowy, many-winged darkangel flying toward her comes directly from that childhood experience.) But that kind of insight is rare for me. Most of the time, whatever inspired the bits and pieces of my stories --- whether those inspirational incidents came from books, movies, or real life --- are too deeply buried for me to figure out where they came from. Most of the time, if I'm able to discern the origin of a story element, it's long after the story is finished and "cooled." In the heat of composition, all analysis is lost. I love reading folklore and mythology for pleasure, but rarely consciously or deliberately research a story. For me, most of the story-building process takes place below the threshold of consciousness. So far, the Internet seems to have played only a small role in that process --- but this may well change as the Internet continues to evolve. I find I'm using the Internet more and more all the time.
Patrice Kindl: What ideas? My brain is a vast and empty wasteland, teeming with antimatter. With my last book, Lost in the Labyrinth (Fall, 2002), I discovered a wonderful swindle. It's called "Retelling a Myth." The story is already there, you see, and you just have to do the fun and easy part of rounding out the characters and throwing in a few plot twists. Research demanded a tax deductible trip to the land of origin of the myth (Crete), as well as reading lots of really, really dull books, and checking out Internet websites (unfortunately, teeny print size and no pictures usually meant a more useful site).
The Internet is very helpful, whether I am using traditional material or no. I live in a small village, nearly an hour away from the nearest big library, so I appreciate the instant gratification of the net.
Nancy Springer: I generally draw on traditional mythology or folklore, which I research from the traditional sourcebooks, such as Larousse. In the early years of my career I read mythology obsessively. Now I've largely internalized the mythic patterns, and when I write fantasy, I call on a sense of what feels "right" in mythic terms. I use the Internet only occasionally. For I Am Morgan Le Fay, for instance, I visited a Cornwall site to look at pictures, for a visual sense of setting. But my main source for my Arthurian novels (the other one is I Am Mordred) is Sir Thomas Malory's Morte D'Arthur.
Carol Hughes: I find that influences and ideas come from absolutely everywhere. From the books, magazines and newspapers I read, or sometimes from something seenon a long walk or during a trip to a new city. Sometimes you know immediately when you are going to use an incident or a name that has sparked your interest, but other times ideas will lie dormant for the longest time, only to turn up when you most need them. Gathering ideas is a subconscious activity, though the art of observation can be greatly honed and improved by taking notes when you're out and about.
Ideas really start to take off when I'm researching a particular field of interest. I tend to write about things I like or want to do. My book Jack Black and the Ship of Thieves began as a desire to fly on an airship. To make the story resonate I read everything I could about Zeppelins, what life was like on board, how they were built etc. etc. The Internet is a fantastic place for initial research, but it is limited. I tend to go there first to get an overview of whatever I'm looking for and from there to the library or bookstore to find more specialized sources.
As for traditional mythology and folklore, I hope there are elements of these in my work. Most great stories that resonate and stay with you [fantasy or otherwise] almost always incorporate the strains of classic storytelling that are found in most of the world's mythology.
Nancy Farmer: I get my ideas from a little shop in Tijuana, Mexico. No, I'm not going to give you the address. I am inspired by traditional folklore, but try not to copy it. I never use the Internet. My research consists of wandering through libraries and stumbling onto books.
Mark L. Williams: The Internet always comes in handy. As for the folklore, I find it kicks in after the initial idea: After I set down the basics for Danger Boy, I began researching Alexandria, Egypt in more depth, for example, for the library scenes, including the mythological background on Thea's name. But the myth-pool does always seem to be close at hand...
Sherwood Smith: Ideas come in images, which then connect into stories. I read a tremendous amount of history (I have a graduate degree in it, actually) and I have a house full of books. I don't do research off the Internet; so far, at least, you can't get original sources off the Internet. I much prefer original sources for real insight into the paradigm of a given time.
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