by Shannon Hale
All the hands and voices pulled her into the clearing of the homestead and onto a seat by the fire. A hearty lunch stew filled bowls; laughter and excited chatter bounced off the trees. Rin was silent. She tried to read her own self as she often had others, and she saw much fault. How could her family know her when she never expressed a wish or an opinion? When she feared herself and hid behind her ma?
Slowly, carefully, she could change that. It no longer seemed a hopeless task. With her ma beside her, nieces and nephews hugging her legs, the voices of her brothers and their wives falling over her like rain, she was deluged in home. She felt so aware of her family, they seemed a part of her own body. They loved her, she knew. That was a place to start. Now it was her turn—it was time to let her family meet Rin.
The End
A conversation
with
SHANNON HALE
Shannon Hale talks about her
inspirations, her writing, and her life
January 2005
Interviewer: You’ve mentioned having to read many staid books in graduate school that didn’t ignite your imagination or stimulate much emotion. But, as you’ve noted, reading these books inspired you to write something that you would want to read. The Goose Girl is the novel that came out of that experience. What about this book appeals to you as a reader?
Shannon: Yes, for most of my college years I read only what was assigned in class (I didn’t have time for anything else!). I certainly don’t mean to belittle those books or writers—most of what I read was beautifully written or historically important. But after a while, it all started to feel the same to me, and I often wasn’t drawn into the story or captivated by the characters as I had been by the kind of books I loved as a kid. By my second year of graduate school, I was craving a book that created a world where I wanted to be. I longed for a rousing story that would give me reasons to turn the pages besides just completing an assignment. I wanted the writers to imbue their characters with skills and resources that would give them a fighting chance to succeed, not just doom them to bleakness and failure. Something fun. Something with hope, but not an easy, obvious happy ending (those drive me batty). Adventure. Romance. Fantasy. I love these things. As a reader, I also don’t want to have to sacrifice quality writing for a compelling story.
The Goose Girl, as well as your other two novels—Enna Burning and Princess Academy—transcend time yet are rooted in a concrete past. Why did you choose these time periods and settings? I wanted the settings to feel like real places, places where we’ve been before, places that could exist but don’t. To me, it makes the story feel as though it’s starting in a distant fairy tale then bursting through into reality. When you place a story in a real location, there’s always the danger that a reader can dismiss the story as just being about Texas or Mexico or fourteenth-century Italy. A mythical place, an invented realm, has a universal appeal. Anyone can inhabit it—including the reader.
I do like to base the settings on real places, albeit very loosely. Like many Americans, I’m a true mutt, and I tend to use my settings to explore countries that are a part of my heritage. Bayern was partly inspired by Germany, and Danland in Princess Academy is a nod to my Scandinavian ancestry.
Any plans to write a contemporary story?
I’ve written dozens of contemporary short stories and a middle-grade novel to practice writing (all unpublished—for which blessing readers everywhere should sigh in relief). Over the past five years, I’ve been writing a contemporary novel for adults that I really like, though at this pace who knows when it will be finished. I find it’s loads of fun to be able to make contemporary references and use words like “hand lotion,” “yoga,” “Barbie doll,” “plumber’s bum.” Very freeing. I find it more challenging to write about a faraway land a long time ago, when all my words and references, all my metaphors, are limited to what is in the main character’s realm of experience. But I love falling into the faraway and long ago stuff, and so that’s where my imagination mostly takes me.
What is your favorite fairy tale?
“The Goose Girl” was always one of my favorites, and certainly my most favorite of the tales that have never been made into films. I was always intrigued by the story—frustrated with the princess and eager to understand more about Falada and the wind. I tend to favor fairy tales with a good douse of mystery and enchantment, the kind of story that keeps me up wondering “why?” and “how?” and “what next?”
Any other favorite tales that might inspire a future book?
Yes! But I won’t reveal them.
You’ve said that when you sat down to write The Goose Girl, you just wrote the story you wanted to tell and that you had no thoughts about what age you were writing for, or what genre you were writing in. Were you surprised that it’s been categorized as young adult fantasy? Did this decision affect your subsequent writing—were you more conscious of your audience when you wrote Enna Burning?
While writing The Goose Girl, I had two readers I wanted to satisfy—myself from ages ten to sixteen (the ages when reading was the most fun for me) and myself now. I wasn’t surprised that the book could be young adult, but I never imagined it would be only that. I was afraid that the “children’s book” branding would turn off some readers. I know now that many adults like me go to the YA shelf looking for the really good stuff! I had already begun Enna Burning when Bloomsbury Children’s bought The Goose Girl, so I didn’t have the YA label in mind for the all-important outlining and first draft phase.
Although I did several rounds of rewrites with my editor for both books, I was surprised and pleased that during that process she didn’t ask me to make it “younger,” except for shaving a couple of years off Ani’s and Enna’s ages. I don’t like to write about sex, gratuitous violence, or such, so I think my writing naturally seems suited for younger audiences. Truthfully, I wasn’t even aware that there were young adult publishers when I was writing these books; I supposed that most of those books trickled down from adult publishing. I’ve been delighted to learn what a vibrant, varied, voracious field it has become, especially in the last couple of decades.
You’re married and have a child. Do the events in Isi’s life—her falling in love with Geric in The Goose Girl and having a child in Enna Burning—mirror what was happening in your life as you were writing her story?
It is easy for me to write about romantic love because it’s very real in my own life. I did meet my soul mate, was his best friend for many years, fell in love, and married him just after starting to write The Goose Girl. I found out I was pregnant a year after I had first written about Isi’s own joyous event, but I have no doubt that my life does influence what I think my characters would want in their happily ever after. It was serendipity that both Isi and I had baby boys. I’m so happy for her. Boys are awesome.
Do you see yourself, or anyone you know, in any of your characters? I’m certain that bits of me and everyone I know make their way into my characters, though I have never consciously based a character on a real person. (Real people are so complex and very difficult to stuff into a page without their seeming erratic.) I based Isi and Enna’s friendship on my friendship with my best friend of fifteen years, and I repurposed elements of my relationship with my husband for both Ani and Geric’s and Enna and Finn’s relationships. Miri in Princess Academy is burdened with more of my younger self than anyone I’ve ever written.
Have you noticed a change in books written today for teen and tween readers as compared to books you read as a girl?
I see more books written specifically for young adults. In fifth grade, I began to move from children’s books to the adult books that had made their way to my school library shelves, but now there are so many books targeted just to older children and teens.
I think there is an increase in how much racy material is acceptable. The Goose Girl was actually turned down by one publisher who said the market was moving more toward “edgy” books.
I also see more female main
characters (at last!). It is often a sad truth that girls will read boys but boys won’t read girls, and so the majority of books for kids were about boys. When I was younger, there were no kids’ TV shows or cartoons with a main girl character, and some shows had absolutely no girl characters at all! In television, this trend is changing (I love the Powerpuff Girls!) and that attitude appears to be spreading. I do see more boys accepting girls as viable heroes and it will get better, but I doubt Harry Potter would have done as well had it been Harriet Potter.
Since the publication of The Goose Girl, you’ve spent a lot of time on the road talking to readers, as well as chatting with them online through your Web site. What have you learned about yourself and your books from these exchanges?
About my books, I learn who they’re for and if they succeed. Until I started to get feedback from readers, I had no idea who The Goose Girl would reach or what the reaction would be. After I dragged myself through the final proofing pass and read it dozens of times, I’d started to hate it. It was such a relief to hear that it had found its audience! I find this happens with each book. At the moment, Princess Academy is in the final editing stage and I have NO idea what people will think. I do my best to tell the story that I have, but the readers decide if it’s a success.
About me, I’ve learned that I don’t personalize the (extremely minor) celebrity. The idea that someone would want my signature on anything but a bank check seems ridiculous to me. Honors and fan letters are for the books, not for me. I try to enjoy the attention sometimes just for the sake of my ten-year-old self, who would get such a kick out of it.
What’s the worst thing anyone has said to you about your books or your writing?
In one of the rejection letters I got for The Goose Girl, the editor said she found my writing “stiff, self-conscious, and cliché.” Those words rang in my head for weeks. One reader, intending to be complimentary, told me she read The Goose Girl in an hour and a half. That book consumed two years of my life, I agonized over every word, and she burned through its 383 pages in 90 minutes. Ouch!
What’s the best?
A girl wrote me that she didn’t like to read until she read The Goose Girl and now has been reading books ever since. There’s no greater compliment than that something I did made someone love to read.
Don’t miss the award-winning, New York Times-bestselling books in the Princess Academy series
“Hale weaves an intricate, multilayered story about families, relationships, education, and the place we call home.”
—SLJ, starred review, on Princess Academy
“There are many pleasures to this satisfying tale: a precise lyricism to the language . . . and a rhythm to the story. . . . An unalloyed joy.”
—Kirkus Reviews, starred review, on Princess Academy
“Proves once again that with quick wit and brave words, one person really can change the world.”
—SLJ on Palace of Stone
“Powerful and deeply engaging.”
—Kirkus Reviews on Palace of Stone
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EAGER FOR MORE TALES OF MAGIC AND ADVENTURE?
Follow Rapunzel and Jack (of “Jack and the Beanstalk” fame) to new lands in Shannon Hale’s graphic novels!
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