Swimming for Sunlight
Page 30
Stella has taught me so much about bravery. She still has her jittery moments, but she’s gone from being afraid to leave the house to nudging me out the door for our two-mile walk every day.
How did you approach writing a community of characters in their retirement years?
I realized in an early draft of the book that to write Nan and Bitsie and their friends, I needed to cultivate a greater understanding of their formative experiences. I never had the opportunity to take women’s studies in college, so I decided to engineer my own crash course. I spent a summer reading and researching the history of the women’s movement and the ways women have been represented in pop culture over the years. It was fascinating, maddening, enlightening, heartbreaking, and deeply inspiring.
Katie seems to have shied away from the things she wanted most in an attempt to create a sense of safety. Can you relate to the way fear navigates her choices?
When I was in college the first time around, I was so afraid of failing. The idea of trying for something I might not get felt so horribly shameful, and I got very good at aiming just below what I thought I could achieve. Then, after my sophomore year, I dropped out of college and promptly went out into the real world, where I fell flat on my face. It was the life events equivalent of doing a belly flop when there had never even been a pool. At the time it was horrible, but in the overall trajectory of my life, it was the best thing that could have happened to me. I failed and I survived, and I didn’t have to pretend to be perfect anymore. On the other side of that failure, it seemed way less scary to start trying for things that felt out of reach. Rejection didn’t scare me.
Katie is just at the edge of that experience; she’s starting to get comfortable with the fact that playing it safe hasn’t gotten her the things a person needs to thrive.
As the story progresses, we learn that Katie is afraid of a lot of things. Do you identify with her struggles on a personal level? How did you figure out what Katie’s healing process should be?
I was a nervous little kid, and I headed into adulthood with anxiety issues. I think it’s one of the things that made me a writer, but training your brain for writing doesn’t necessarily help. Once you’ve taught yourself to always think about the what-ifs, it’s hard to stop. I finally got to a point where I was uncomfortable being uncomfortable and started seeking better ways to manage my mental health.
I consulted therapists and read as much as I could on trauma and anxiety. The Body Keeps Score by Bessel van der Kolk is brilliant. I found The Antidote: Happiness for People Who Can’t Stand Positive Thinking by Oliver Burkeman so helpful on a personal level, and it sent me down a rabbit hole of stoic philosophy (which probably inspired some of Bitsie’s worldview).
Toward the end of Swimming for Sunlight, Bitsie says to Katie, “I know being okay is work, and there’s chemical parts and physical parts and it might be a long fight. But it’s a fight for something worth it, right?” There are so many variable personal elements involved in mental health issues, which means there aren’t cookie-cutter answers. I wanted to be careful not to prescribe anything too specific for Katie’s recovery. It felt right to leave Katie at a place where there’s still work ahead of her, but she’s set up to succeed, and she’s finally fighting for herself.
The setting for Swimming for Sunlight is in Florida. How did that come about, and what kind of research did you do to get the Florida vibe just right?
I spent time in Florida as a child, and was back a few years ago on vacation. I have a soft spot for that particular brand of suburbia and palm trees. Also, when we lived in Rochester, we were the newcomers in a neighborhood full of people who had built their houses in the fifties and sixties, and that was certainly an inspiration.
This is your third book! How did writing it feel different from writing your first two?
This book feels very special because I’d had the idea and a vague outline for a while, but when it came time to kick it into gear, my friend Caroline Angell (author of All the Time in the World), suggested we do a weekly call. We reported in on our work, talked through narrative problems and character development, and set goals for the next week. We called our calls “Introvert Happy Hour,” even though they very often strayed far beyond the hour mark. There’s something so meaningful to me about the way our friendship grew through nurturing each other’s work, and how that celebration of female friendship is echoed in the book.
How did you get your start as a writer? What specific moments and people along the way have encouraged you to keep going?
I grew up performing in summer camp plays and community theatre and first went to college as a drama major. I loved the work, even though I wasn’t always thrilled about being on stage. When I went back to college in my twenties, I took a few writing classes and felt like I’d finally found the right medium for my interests. But I draw on my theatre training constantly, especially when it comes to character development. I’m so thankful for that foundation, even though I didn’t realize what I was laying the groundwork for at the time.
After college, I joined a writing group in Rochester, and the camaraderie, the feedback, and the deadlines were vital to helping me stick with it. I also had the pleasure of attending the Titles Over Tea book club at the Greece, New York, Barnes & Noble. Titles Over Tea is open to the public, which results in a group of book lovers of different ages who have had very different life experiences. I read novels I would never have read otherwise, and also had familiar books opened up in new ways through our discussions. It made me a better reader and a better writer. And I think also influenced some of the multigenerational relationships in this book. Moving away from my writing group and book club is one of the hardest things I’ve ever done.
Now I’m in an online group of novelists, I have critique partners who are constructive and inspiring, and I take weekly writer hikes with my friend Cassandra Dunn (author of The Art of Adapting). Since the actual writing process is so solitary, connecting with the community of writers around me is vital. It truly is an honor to get to work with and root for other writers on this level. It’s an experience I cherish.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
ALLIE LARKIN is the internationally bestselling author of the novels Stay and Why Can’t I Be You. Her short fiction has been published in the Summerset Review and Slice, and her nonfiction in the anthologies I’m Not the Biggest Bitch in This Relationship and Author in Progress. She lives in the San Francisco Bay Area with her husband, Jeremy, and their fearful, faithful German Shepherd, Stella.
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Interior design by Jill Putorti
Cover design by Janet Perr
Cover photographs by John Duarte / Getty Images and Mnica Durn / Eyeem / Getty Images
Author photograph by Jeremy Larkin
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Names: Larkin, Allie, author.
Title: Swimming for sunlight / Allie Larkin.
Description: New York : Atria, 2019. |
Identifiers: LCCN 2018028792 (print) | LCCN 2018030240 (ebook) | ISBN 9781501198496 (eBook) | ISBN 9781501198489 (paperback)
Subjects: | BISAC: FICTION / Contemporary Women. | FICTION / Family Life.
Classification: LCC PS3612.A6485 (ebook) | LCC PS3612.A6485 S95 2019 (print) | DDC 813/.6—dc23
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2018028792
ISBN 978-1-5011-9848-9
ISBN 978-1-5011-9849-6 (ebook)