Kate Heartfield’s debut novel Armed in Her Fashion (ChiZine
Publications) is available now. Her interactive novel The Road to Canterbury is now available from Choice of Games.
Tor.com Publishing will publish two novellas by Kate, beginning with Alice Payne Arrives in late 2018. Her
fiction has appeared in magazines and anthologies including Strange Horizons, Lackington’s, and Monstrous
Little Voices: New Tales from Shakespeare’s Fantasy World. Kate is a former
newspaper editor and lives in Ottawa, Canada.
Website: https://heartfieldfiction.com/
1 - How did your first book
change your life? How does your most recent work compare to your previous? How
does it feel different?
My first novel just came out, and even though it took me 20 years of
hard work to reach that point, I feel more than ever that I’m just at the
beginning, both craft-wise and career-wise. I had a somewhat odd entry into
book-length publishing in that I sold my first and second novel, plus two
novellas, within the space of a year, so I have four books coming out in a
short period of time. I feel… liminal, I suppose. As if I’m about to learn how
to do something different, but I don’t quite know what that is. And in the
meantime, I’m learning a lot about how to be a working author in 2018.
2 - How did you come to fiction
first, as opposed to, say, poetry or non-fiction?
I was one of those kids who retreated into books, and the books were
usually novels, so that’s what feels like home to me. I did make my living as a
journalist for a long time, so non-fiction is comfortable too, and I might
write a non-fiction book at some point.
3 - How long does it take to
start any particular writing project? Does your writing initially come quickly,
or is it a slow process? Do first drafts appear looking close to their final
shape, or does your work come out of copious notes?
I am not a natural outliner, but I have found that I do need an outline
or else I have trouble getting a first draft that is story-shaped. Even with an
outline, my novels don’t tend to cohere as stories until the second draft. The
third draft is for getting deeper into characters and into the world, and then
it goes off to my agent and critique partners for feedback.
4 - Where does a work of prose
usually begin for you? Are you an author of short pieces that end up combining
into a larger project, or are you working on a "book" from the very
beginning?
I usually have a pretty good sense of how long a piece will be before I
start it; if I plan it to be a short story, it will be; and the same is true
for a novel. That said, I do have vague plans to expand a 750-word piece of
flash fiction into a novel, so sometimes I can be surprised.
5 - Are public readings part of
or counter to your creative process? Are you the sort of writer who enjoys
doing readings?
I’m lucky in that I don’t have a fear of public speaking and I enjoy
reading my work aloud. I don’t think it factors into the actual process of
creation, for me; it feels more like the business side of the job. But it may
be acting on my creative brain in ways I don’t recognize.
6 - Do you have any theoretical
concerns behind your writing? What kinds of questions are you trying to answer
with your work? What do you even think the current questions are?
Even my most light-hearted romps tend to have big political questions
behind them, about the nature of progress and the role of the individual. I
write in historical settings frequently, and I’m often trying to tell the
stories of the people who were marginalized in their own time or ignored by
posterity.
7 – What do you see the current
role of the writer being in larger culture? Does s/he even have one? What do
you think the role of the writer should be?
Writers ask questions and tell stories. My kid is an avid reader, and I
see stories working a wonderful magic on him. They teach him empathy and
imagination, and as a child of this century, he’s going to need those.
8 - Do you find the process of
working with an outside editor difficult or essential (or both)?
I can thank my many years in journalism for the fact that I am
comfortable working with editors, and I’ve been blessed with great ones.
They’ve saved me from myself many times.
9 - What is the best piece of
advice you've heard (not necessarily given to you directly)?
I refer to this one a lot: Way back in 2007, I was a student in the
creative writing by correspondence through Humber College. My mentor was the
late Paul Quarrington, and he was very encouraging and perceptive. In one
email, he told me that once in a while, I should allow myself to forget about
subtlety and grace and “remember that on some level, all this creative stuff is
SHOW BIZ” (caps his). Like most writing advice, this was suited to a particular
kind of writer, and would be no good at all to a different kind of writer. But
it was huge for me, and I still write “SHOW BIZ” in the margins of my work, and
at least once, have shouted it out loud to an empty room while I was writing,
so … the eccentricity thing is coming along nicely, I guess.
10 - How easy has it been for
you to move between genres (novels to short stories to journalism/non-fiction)?
What do you see as the appeal?
Part of the appeal, I think, is that a change is as good as a rest. I
have a tendency to over-work, so being able to switch to a different project is
good for my brain.
11 - What kind of writing
routine do you tend to keep, or do you even have one? How does a typical day
(for you) begin?
Now that I’m self-employed, my best writing hours are during the day,
while my kid is at school, but I need to spend some of those hours on editing
and teaching work. So my to-do list varies from day to day, and sometimes I do
still end up writing fiction after the boy goes to sleep.
12 - When your writing gets
stalled, where do you turn or return for (for lack of a better word)
inspiration?
I read really good novels, or I go wander around an art gallery, or go
to a concert.
13 - What fragrance reminds you
of home?
I come from the prairies, so it’s the sun on dry grass.
14 - David W. McFadden once
said that books come from books, but are there any other forms that influence
your work, whether nature, music, science or visual art?
Music is the big one for me; I’m often trying to evoke the same mood as
a particular song, and I have playlists for every big project. I listen to a
lot of Calexico, Algiers and Murder by Death these days.
15 - What other writers or
writings are important for your work, or simply your life outside of your work?
That’s a big question! These days, I tend to alternate between recent
speculative fiction (writers like Aliette de Bodard, Robert Jackson Bennett or
N.K. Jemisin) and non-fiction or old primary sources for research.
16 - What would you like to do
that you haven't yet done?
A couple of years ago, I wrote a novella in a shared-world anthology
with five other writers, based on Shakespeare’s fantasy worlds. I discovered
then that I really enjoy working on shared-world and collaborative projects, so
if the right project came along at the right time, I’d like to do more of that.
17 - If you could pick any
other occupation to attempt, what would it be? Or, alternately, what do you
think you would have ended up doing had you not been a writer?
My big life regret is not becoming an archaeologist.
18 - What made you write, as
opposed to doing something else?
I can’t remember ever not writing, so I have no idea! Sometimes I’ll
finish a project and look around and wonder what on Earth I’m supposed to do or
think about now. That lasts about five minutes, and then I start the next
thing.
19 - What was the last great
book you read? What was the last great film?
I just served on the novel jury for the Sunburst award, which means I
just finished reading an entire stack of great books, but I can’t talk about
the particulars. (The long list will be out soon.) The last great film was
Black Panther, which was pure joy from beginning to end.
20 - What are you currently
working on?
I just finished the draft of the second book in the duology of time-travel
novellas I have coming out soon, and I finished the game I was working on for
about a year. So I’m in a space between big projects. I’m working my way
through a small stack of short stories that have been patiently waiting for
drafting or revision. I’m also in the early stages of planning another game.
And I’m itching to start a new novel.
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