First Draft: A Dialogue of Writing is a weekly show featuring in-depth interviews with fiction, nonfiction, essay writers, and poets, highlighting the voices of writers as they discuss their work, their craft, and the literary arts. Hosted by Mitzi Rapkin, First Draft celebrates creative writing and the individuals who are dedicated to bringing their carefully chosen words to print as well as the impact writers have on the world we live in.
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In this episode, Mitzi talks to Paolo Bacigalupi about his new novel, Navola.
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From the episode:
Mitzi Rapkin: So, when you were world building for this, which has a very extensive world. You have philosophers, you have language, you have myth, you have a pantheistic religion. You have gods. The gods have their own stories. You have poets, and the poets have their own songs. You have all these countries, and the countries have their own identities. It’s really big. And I understand when you started writing this, you were kind of coming out of a creative place of burnout, and you were writing this just 500 words at first. And I’m wondering when you are building such big worlds, and you say, you write this in secret, you don’t talk about it, what are you like when you’re walking around in the world? Do you bump into walls? Are you just so into this? Do you even tell your family?
Paolo Bacigalupi: Later on, like when you’re really, really immersed, there are periods where I’ll be working for 12 hours or 16 hours a day and trying to surface from the living dream of that created world and everything that’s happening, and it is very jarring, like you come out of it. It’s almost like sandpaper trying to interact with regular people around you. It’s like you’re trying to convince yourself, mostly, that they exist and that they matter. It’s almost like, wait, no, no, I was in the real world and now I’m in the fictional world, and you guys don’t move around the way I want you to, because in my world, I’m God, and I move everybody where I like them. And here you actually want me to wash the dishes. That’s very frustrating to me right now. But this book actually came out of, well burnout is the best possible word for it. I had been writing really consistently. I was working really hard. I’d been maintaining a career, both in writing YA books and adult books. And it was going very well on paper. I was selling a lot of books. I was traveling a lot. I was promoting a lot. It was very busy, and I was creating a lot. And at some point I collapsed completely, and for a variety of reasons, some of that had to do with the amount of work pressure I’d been putting on myself, some of it had to do with other stressors that come from becoming successful that I never really anticipated, where, you know, like, the more successful you are, the more actually people want to mess with you, which was sort of a weird thing. I wasn’t well equipped for that, so I crashed out, and I became incredibly depressed. And at some point, I actually started thinking I was not going to be a writer anymore. I was actively sort of thinking, okay, maybe I want to become a solar installer, or maybe I could go back and get a counseling degree. Or, you know, I was really starting to explore other paths, because the act of writing for me had become incredibly toxic, like just even trying to sit down and write, felt like I was sort of sticking my finger in a light socket. And it was torturous and damaging. It felt damaging. So, in an attempt to try to figure out whether or not there was anything in writing for me anymore, anything that engaged me anymore, I started doing this sort of writing practice, and it was 500 words a day, and it could be anything. It didn’t have to be good. It didn’t have to be coherent. It explicitly was not meant for an audience. You know, it was beyond being in secret. It was private and it was just to see if there was anything even creative anymore that was interesting to me. And so, the rule was that I would write for 500 words, and if I was enjoying what I was doing, I would keep going until it got boring or annoying or whatever. And if it was at 500 words and I didn’t like what was happening, I would just stop and walk away. And it was both divorced from the the idea of having to be quality, but also it was divorced from all of the things that as you become very skilled as a writer, you’re working with a lot of variables. So, you’re working with, how does this plot arc work? What’s the shape of the book? Does this character conflict work? Is this character functioning consistently? Is the dialog sort of structuring in an interesting way? Is this scene ramping up? You know, there’s a bunch of little components that you’re working and most of those things are, is this thing not just working, but would this work for someone else? So, it’s almost inherently externally focused when you’re doing that work, because you’re aware of what the reader was going to experience as I build this illusion for them? And so, I would write for 500 words, and sometimes I would write science fiction, and sometimes I would write some piece of fantasy. I wrote some very, very bad pornography, terrible sword and sorcery, mighty food, barbarian stuff just crazy. But it was great to feel completely free.
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Paolo Bacigalupi is an internationally bestselling author of speculative fiction. He has won the Hugo, Nebula, World Fantasy, John W. Campbell and Locus Awards, as well as being a finalist for the National Book Award and a winner of the Michael L. Printz Award for Excellence in Young Adult Literature. Paolo’s work often focuses on questions of sustainability and the environment, most notably the impacts of climate change. He has written novels for adults, young adults, and children, and his new book is Navola.