Interview with Teresa Edgerton Part 2
Last week in part one of this interview, Teresa Edgerton talked about her books and the Fantasy genre. This week part two focuses on her writing and the writing of Fantasy.
DL: How did you decide to become a writer?
TE: I'm not altogether certain that becoming a writer was something I actually decided, rather than something that happened to me. As with most of the writers I know, stories just come to me, often when I'm attempting to do something quite unrelated to writing, something utterly mundane and uninvolving -- when I'm out taking a walk, when I'm doing the laundry, when I'm falling asleep at night. When I was about seven or eight years old, I started writing some of those stories down. But even if I had never put pen to paper, the stories would still have been there.
Of course, there comes a time when you consider the idea of writing for publication, of writing professionally, when you ask yourself whether you can still be satisfied just writing the stories down as they come to you, for your own pleasure or for the people closest to you -- or are you ready, now, to start studying the art and craft of writing, to improve your skills to the point where you can begin to communicate those beguiling visions to the world at large. For me, that time came when I was about to turn thirty, which seemed to me, in those days, a very considerable age, a vast and immeasurable age. I felt that if I truly had any ambitions along those lines, it was time and past time to begin to pursue those ambitions in a serious way. And there were other considerations. I had two young children, a third on the way (I didn't know it yet, but there was a fourth in my not-too-distant future) and it seemed to me that of all the careers I might find appealing, this one was not only the most appealing, but also something I could learn and I could do while staying home with my little ones.
DL: How long did it take you to write your first book and how long did it take to get that book published?
TE: I tend to be obsessive about things (to say the least), so I wrote and rewrote Child of Saturn again and again, perhaps a dozen drafts (I stopped counting at seven) before I was satisfied and ready to send it out. This took about six years. As a result, it was very, very polished by the time it was finally submitted, and I was able to sell it to the second publisher I approached. Since editors are not in any rush to read unsolicited and unagented manuscripts from unknown writers (I am talking about those few houses that are willing to accept over-the-transom manuscripts at all), this part of the process still took about a year. This was at a time when there was a positive glut of fantasy at all the publishers, and so -- while I was very lucky they were even willing to consider, let alone buy my book -- there was still a huge pile of recent acquisitions they had to publish first before they brought out my little masterpiece. Then, after they had scheduled the book, they decided they wanted to make it a lead title and do some extra promotion -- so that caused a further delay. From contract to publication it was about three years. Things can move very, very slowly in the world of publishing.
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