Kaliban: You have a theater
background, don’t you?
MRK: Yes.
K: So, you must have
taken improv classes before…
MRK: Not since
high school.
K: That’s a little
while.
MRK: Yeah.
K: But do you find
those muscles…I have an acting background, too, and I find that, when I’m doing
improv or doing it often, it comes really easy.
MRK: Yes.
K: But, I don’t know
if it’s the day after or the week after, but those muscles begin to immediately
get stiff.
MRK: Absolutely.
K: And when I have to
do it again, it’s like “…all right, ok, ‘yes and’…”
MRK: (laughs)
K: But then you work
it out and it’s like “Oh! I remember this!”
MRK: Yeah, that’s
very much it, which is why I’m so glad that I *just* had taken a workshop.
K: Because it made
the show better.
MRK: Yeah. “Look
at me being able to draw these skills in from other places!”
K: Did you go to the
open mic (ed. note: on Thurs. night @
Nerdcon) at all?
MRK: No.
K: Yeah, I didn’t
either, although I kind of wanted to.
MRK: I wanted to
but I had puppet rehearsal.
K: Oh! What are you
rehearsing for?
MRK: We have a
show here at Nerdcon. (ed. note: which
was *awesome*, btw)
K: Oh! Of course. Ok.
And you had to rehearse.
MRK: Yes…you
know. It’s a thing we do.
K: (laughs) I should
say that we are here with Mary Robinette Kowal, Hugo award-winning author of Shades of Milk and Honey amongst other
works. You are a voice actor and a puppeteer; how did you get started with
puppets?
MRK: The short
story version is that I was already doing puppets in high school and by the
time I got to college, I was one of those kids who wanted to do everything, so a
career in Art Education with a minor in Theatre and Speech was the closest I
could come to doing everything I wanted to do. I was doing Little Shop of
Horrors as the giant man-eating plant and a professional puppeteer came to see
the show and I was like “Wait, people give you money to do this?!” and pretty
much changed career choices on the spot. Because it does combine everything I
want to do. You have to sing, you have to act, you have to lift giant heavy
things…
K: (laughs)
MRK: …there’s
sculpture, there’s painting, there’s writing, it’s everything I want to do.
K: I had a similar
experience; I was pre-med in college but I had acted as a kid and it wasn’t until
I got to college and saw other kids who had gone to arts high schools and who
had thought about this and done it their whole lives, that I realized, ”oh,
this is a career, people actually get paid to do this!”
MRK: Yeah!
K: My mom would drive
me in on Saturdays, just to be in a little show or something like that…of
course, I’m not an actor now, but those tools…I enjoyed that sort of thing and
that world.
MRK: Yeah.
K: Tell me more about
puppeteering in general. I understand performing, but when you’re being a
puppeteer or you’re being a character, how do use those acting skills?
MRK: One of the
things about puppetry is that a lot of people make the mistake of thinking that
it’s not acting and it totally is. It’s just that we’re using a different tool.
A “meat” actor or “fleshie”—
K: (laughs)
MRK: —uses their
own body. Whereas a puppeteer is using an external thing. Because of that, one
of the advantages that we have is that we can see the body language of our character
very clearly. But the other thing is that we cannot do things on instinct quite
as much as a fleshie actor can. Like we have to sit down and break apart “what
is it that makes a person look scared? What is the body language?” So, because of
that, in a lot of ways, we’re able to use our tools much more deliberately and
make more conscious choices…not always, because there are some fleshie actors
who think about it that deeply. But it’s something that is just inherent in
puppetry.
K: What’s Iceland
like?
MRK: Iceland is amazing!
Everyone needs to go to Iceland.
K: You worked on a
show there.
MRK: I worked on
a show called LazyTown…it’s still on television. I’m not on the show anymore
because my writing career took off, which is lovely. Iceland is the most
magical place I have ever lived. It is like stepping out of Earth and into another
realm altogether. The landscape is ethereal; there aren’t trees, so you can see
the raw, rugged power of the land and you can see to the horizon line.
K: But it isn’t just
blasted landscape…
MRK: No, no…it’s…well,
parts of it are. Some of the inland is, but the other places are like Middle-Earth.
There’s this area that I call the Land of a Thousand Throw-Pillows.
K: (laughs)
MRK: It’s a
lava-scape, so it’s old lava but it’s all been covered over with moss and the
moss is four knuckles deep. So you can stick your hand into it all the way, so
all of your fingers are completely hidden and it looks like someone has come
and upholstered the entire landscape with green shag throw-pillows.
K: Luxurious!
MRK: Yes.
K: How did you get
set up with LazyTown? How did you get the job?
MRK: I
auditioned!
K: Oh, really?
MRK: Yes, I know
it’s a strange thing…
K: When you
auditioned, did you know that it was—
MRK: In Iceland?
K: Yeah.
MRK: What
happened was, I had auditioned when they were originally casting and to do an
audition, you send in a tape and then you go and if you get to the next level,
you do a live audition. I was not picked for one of the parts but they had to
do a mid-season replacement and so they called me on a Thursday and said (Icelandic
accent) “Hello. We would like to ask you to come. Can you be here Monday?” And
I was like “YES. Of course! Absolutely!”
K: “I’ll start
swimming now!”
MRK: Yes. “Iceland?
Check!”
K: (laughs)
MRK: But it was a
two week trial, so I had to pack not knowing if I was coming back at the end of
two weeks or if I would be there for another six months.
K: Right.
MRK: So it was
six months…we had about a year off and then we went back. So it was a year and
a half in Iceland.
K: Nice.
MRK: The second
time, my husband went with me.
K: I hear the
upholstered rocks are *lovely*.
MRK: Yes. The hot
springs are better, though.
K: Oh, yeah!
MRK: Yeah.
K: Let’s talk about
writing: when you write…I’m sure you get this a lot, having started so recently
and having been so prolific in such a short time…what aspects of your process
have helped you accomplish that? There are authors who struggle to push out one
book within a certain amount of time.
MRK: Honestly, coming
from a theatre background.
K: Oh, good! That’s
good news for me…
MRK: Yeah, isn’t
it?
K: (laughs)
MRK: Because one
of the things about working in theatre, is that I can’t wait to be creative. I
have to be able to turn it on on demand. There are deadlines in which I am collaborating
with other people, so when I’m designing something or creating anything, it’s
like “Nope. I have to be creative right now.” And as a result of that, I
learned a different work ethic which is “I’m in this place and now I will sit
down and do this creative thing. Because it’s due.” I’ve spent my entire adult
life as a freelancer, juggling multiple different projects and different
deadlines, so that has been enormously helpful. The other thing…again, because
I had to actually, consciously think about how to convey an emotion with an inanimate
object to an audience…and I’ve spent 20+ years honing that audience/storyteller
relationship. When I went to go translate that to prose, I found that a lot of
the puppetry skills translated directly into prose, in terms of the ways that
you manipulate an audience, in terms of the body language a character uses to
convey things, how you use focus, what your character is thinking and looking
about to convey stuff to the audience. A lot of that translated directly
across.
K: That’s a very
particular sort of tool or set of skills or sensorium. People who act are used
to probing their own emotional spectrum and reactions to things. Whereas, somebody
who just wants to write might set the scene or the plot but wouldn’t think
about that. The few times I’ve tried to write stuff, I feel like I focused on the
dialogue a lot, how people talk back and forth and people’s emotions. But then I
have to write…”The trees were…something. I hate this part!”
MRK: That was the
other thing that, again, coming from not just the performance background but
also as an art major in college, the process was always about layering things;
you never jump straight to the finished product. For me, it’s very natural…there’s
times when I will, in fact, just write the dialogue in a scene and then go back
and add the action. Because, I’m like “ok, I can follow this emotional
through-line straight through the scene” and then when I go back in and I’m
using the description, part of what I’m doing with that is not just setting the
scene, but I’m also using it to control the pacing. I’ll have a spot where it
says “she paused” and I’ll take that out and put in a physical pause. “What is
she doing in that pause?” and I can use that to describe the scene. So, for me,
I wind up layering stuff, which is also, I think, what allows me to write
fairly quickly because I don’t labor over each individual word as I go along. I
go back and I polish the ones that need to be polished.
K: How do you edit?
Now that we’re talking about process…
MRK: The way my
process works is I do an outline first and the reason I’m mentioning this in response
to the editing question is that my first layer of editing actually happens
then; it’s where I’m getting my structure right. After I’ve got that, I write
the thing and I write it fairly quickly. When I go to edit, the first thing I
do is I’ve had beta readers reading along and I incorporate the notes that I’ve
been given from them that I know how to fix. Then I go through and I read,
making notes in the manuscript about changes that I need to make but I don’t
immediately make them. Because, sometimes I’ve found that I will make a change
and there will be an unintended cascading effect…
K: Sure.
MRK: …and
sometimes I’ve found that if I get farther into the work, that I can fix it
later much easier than an earlier fix. So I just make notes and then I go back
through and fix those. Once I have that structural pass, I give it to a
different set of beta readers to make sure I’m structurally sound. Then, I go
through and do a language pass where I smooth out the language.
K: So, the readers
are an integral part of the process…
MRK: For me,
absolutely.
K: How early do you
give it to the people and say “check this out”?
MRK: I give it to
the people in the raw. And again, this is because I come from a theatre
background. I’ve tried not doing that and that is the only time I go into the ‘neurotic
writer head-space’.
K: It’s like rehearsal.
MRK: Exactly.
K: You’re not just
going to see the finished show. Let’s get notes.
MRK: Exactly, and
I train my readers…“I’m going to be giving this to you in the raw. All I’m worried
about is the structure. Is this playing for you? Do not give me any notes about
dialogue or about line-level stuff.”
K: “Oh, this is
spelled wrong” or whatever.
MRK: Yeah, none
of that “this sentence is awkward” because I will obsess on that and that will
stop the forward…it’s like you don’t go into someone’s rehearsal and say ”well,
I don’t like your costume very much” and you’re like “I’m wearing my street
clothes”.
K: Right. “Get a
haircut.”
MRK: “I don’t
wear a costume until dress rehearsal.”
Mika: A lot of your
books, like Shades of Milk and Honey,
are based on Jane Austen but with a magical, sci-fi bent to it. How did you
come up with that idea in general? I’m a huge Jane Austen fan, I love the
stories and the premise and adding magic to it is just awesome.
MRK: Well, that’s
basically why.
M: Ok. (laughs)
MRK: I was a huge
Jane Austen fan; Persuasion is my
favorite. I had just finished reading a giant, epic fantasy and I’m a lifelong
science fiction and fantasy reader. I was doing a reread of Persuasion as a palate cleanser and get to
the proposal scene and I’m weeping, which I do every time I get to that scene
and I’m like, “why is it that Jane Austen can move me to tears when nothing is
at stake here except ‘are these two people going to get married?’’’…
M: (laughs)
MRK: Not even
Anne Elliot…she’s got another marriage offer on the table, she’s beloved of her
family, she maybe doesn’t have the best father, but nothing is at stake for her
except is she going to get married to that particular guy. And yet in fantasy,
the fate of the world is at stake and evil overlords! I enjoyed that but it didn’t
move me in the same way. So, I was like what I want to see is “can I take
fantasy, which I love, and shove it into a Jane Austen plot mold and have an
intimate family drama, which is what I want. I also started trying to think of
intimate family dramas in fantasy and I was striking out and I’m like “is there
something inherent about fantasy that doesn’t allow that?” or is it just that
we love our evil overlords so much?
M: (laughs)
MRK: The second
book was great because I had Napoleon so I did get to have my evil overlord AND
my Jane Austen. It was great. But that’s basically why; it was a book I wanted
to read and it didn’t exist and so I wrote it. Now I’m finding other books that
are kind of in that vein, but it was a book I wanted to read.
K: You’re a podcaster
as well on Writing Excuses. Your
shows are 15 minutes long…
MRK: In theory.
K: How? How do you do
it? Our shows go on forever and ever.
MRK: We pre-plan
a little bit. We use a timer.
M: We tried that a
couple of times…
MRK: And we’re
also only dealing with a single topic, a single question.
K: Ok.
MRK: If you
picked one of the questions we’re talking about and we just spent time drilling
into my life as a puppeteer…
K: Right.
MRK: But that’s basically
what we do is we pick a single, very specific, very tiny point about writing
and drill into it.
K: And there’s 4
hosts?
MRK: 4 hosts.
K: But that’s 4 people…15
minutes…is it like one of those cable news shows? Does everybody have to have
their blurb?
MRK: We don’t always
all chime in on every single point, but it’s a conversation. We do it live, not
in front of an audience all the time, but we don’t do it over Skype so we can
see each other and can jump in and over the years have learned “someone has
already made this point so I do not need to”.
K: We’re coming to
the end here…we had a bunch of questions about the SFWA flap (ed. note: covered by us at http://justenoughtrope.blogspot.com/2015/08/sexism-in-sff-publishing.html
and http://justenoughtrope.blogspot.com/2015/08/beat-wings-not-angels.html)
but I’m sure you’re sick of talking
about that and I can throw them away. But I did want to say that, with
everything that went on, how composed you were and I admire your poise and how
you dealt with it.
MRK: Thank you.
Which “flap”?
K: Everything that
went on with the controversy over the Bulletin—
MRK: Oh, that.
K: —yeah, and everything
that lead into what was going on with the Hugos this year…
MRK: That’s why I
wanted to check, because the Hugos have nothing to do with SFWA.
K: Right, but the
whole conversation of Diversity in SFF.
MRK: Yeah, let me
talk about that just a little bit.
K: Please.
MRK: The thing
for me about this that I really think is important for people to understand is
that the sexism, misogyny, racism…all of these things are part of the larger
fabric of society. They are not any worse in science fiction and fantasy. The
reason it is so vocal and prominent right now is because in science fiction and
fantasy, that behavior is no longer acceptable and it’s being called out.
People who have been getting away with behavior for a really long time feel
like the rules are being changed and in some ways it’s true but in other ways
it’s like “no, it’s actually never been acceptable to grope a woman”. It’s just
now you’re getting caught and you’re getting called out.
K: The light’s being
shined on it.
MRK: Yes, and
that is the thing that I really want, especially women, to understand and people
of color who feel like science fiction conventions are not safe spaces for
them, that we are in a transition period right now and that the reason that
they’re hearing so much really ugly stuff is because it is being called out and
because it will be called out and it is not acceptable and that these spaces
are in fact safer than a lot of other spaces because we won’t let that happen
anymore.
K: Yes. I don’t know
if we’ve earned it but…I hear you have a story about Sting?
MRK: (laughs) I
do. It’s not nearly as…
K: (laughs)
MRK: I will make
it sound fancy.
K: Dress it up.
MRK: (adopting
affected English accent) So…
K: (laughs)
MRK: Back when I was
in college…
K: Here we go…
MRK: I met Sting
and taught him a song…
K: (laughs)
MRK: …and then
later I saw him again…I went to the opening night cast party after the premiere
of his new show “The Last Ship”…I’ll just say that Sting has very warm hands.
K: (laughs) *ahem*
You heard it here…
MRK: So, the way
this story actually goes is that I went to go see Sting’s show when I was in
college and knew somebody who was working on the show and went backstage with
them afterwards and was waiting for them to get ready to go. And Sting was
standing like, right there. (mimics wide-eyed surprise)
K: (laughs)
MRK: And I’m like
“I’m cool. I’m cool. Totally fine.” For his curtain call, he had done…this is
in North Carolina…he had sung “Nothing could be finer than to be in Carolina in
the morning…” (as Sting) “Next time I’ll know the rest of the lyrics when I’m
here.” And we all laughed because that’s a good way to pay homage and not have
to actually sing the entire song. But he’s backstage and he’s going (sotto
voce) “nothing could be finer than to be in Carolina in the morning…nothing
could be…da da da dum da da…nothing could be…da da da dum…” And so I just
turned to him and I said “Nothing could be sweeter than your sweetie when you
meet her in the morning.” And he sings it back to me and he says “thank you”.
And the warm hands is that I did get to go to the cast party because I had a
friend, again, who was working on the show and I shook Sting’s hand. And he
had, obviously no memory of meeting me before. But it sounds much fancier…
K: “I’m the Carolina
girl!”
MRK: Yeah! “Don’t
you remember? ‘Nothing could be sweeter’? We had a moment!”
K: “I helped you!”
MRK: “I taught
you a song…”
K: I feel like you
have to…if Sting is struggling, you have to help him. I’ve seen…I love The
Police and Sting’s one of my favorite artists and I’ve seen so much film of him
and I feel like so much of that film has been him screwing around or trying to ‘work
through’ something…
MRK: Yeah.
K: So I almost feel
like “I have to help him” but then “Maybe I shouldn’t help him”. Let him
learn. Let Sting learn.
MRK: That’s why I
only gave him that one line.
K: (laughs)
MRK: I stood
there and let him struggle with it for a while until it was obvious he was not
going to get the next lyric. And this was in the days before google so he
couldn’t just pull out his phone.
K: He’s at a cultural
disadvantage.
MRK: Exactly.
K: Mary, thanks so
much for talking with us today.
MRK: Thank you.
This was a great deal of fun.
Mary's most recent novel Valour and Vanity is available online and wherever books are sold. She can be found online at http://maryrobinettekowal.com.
Mary's most recent novel Valour and Vanity is available online and wherever books are sold. She can be found online at http://maryrobinettekowal.com.
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