Interviews
On Friday, June 5th, barnesandnoble.com welcomed Lisa Carey to discuss THE MERMAIDS SINGING.
Moderator: Welcome, Lisa Carey! Thank you for joining us online this evening. How is everything in Boston?
Lisa Carey: Boston is great. I have only been here for 24 hours and am about to leave soon. My parents are having a party for the publication of my book, and I am expecting 200 people.
Peter from New York: Was there sexual tension between Grinne and Stephen, or was I misreading all that? If so, what made you decide to go in that direction with the characters...or not go any further?
Lisa Carey: Well, there was a sexual tension between them. I think that I decided to do this because I needed something for Grinne to focus on while she was avoiding the issue of her mother, and her mother's sexuality was always something she admired. I decided to have her have a crush on Stephen because it related to her mother. From Stephens point of view, he was younger than her and slightly attracted but slightly horrified because she was so young. I didn't take it any further because she went off to Ireland and he wasn't there, and I thought it was better to leave it unresolved rather than sort of fix it.
Tara from Philadelphia: I love the Yeats poem you have at the beginning of the book. I'm curious as to what made you include it.
Lisa Carey: Yeats has always been my favorite poet, and there are two reasons I put it in. One, it always made me think of my grandmother -- who I dedicated the book to. Two, when I was looking through things I had up as possibilities for being put at the beginning of the book, that poem said a lot about the relationship between Grace and Grinne and even Grinne and her grandmother.
Marnie Lanke from Houston: How long did it take for you to write this? There are so many different parts woven together. Did it start out as any one piece of the whole, or did you always have the entire idea in your mind?
Lisa Carey: It started out as a short story, a short story about a 15-year-old girl whose mother was dying of cancer, and they were writing notes back and forth with each other.... I was in an MFA program and I had done three semesters of short stories, and my goal had always been to write a novel before I finished the program and I wanted to go to Ireland. I basically went to Ireland with that short story because it was the only one I thought I needed to write more about. I spent four months thinking about my novel but not writing it. By the end, I decided to have three different women. When I started writing, I wrote the rough draft in about four months and then I did the rewrite, so the whole process took about a year.
Bryan Sullivan from Aurora, CO: I recently read your book and I was very impressed. I am curious if you'd care to say a word about the current state of political affairs in Ireland and England.
Lisa Carey: Thank you for reading it and being impressed. Because I am a writer and not up on most political situations other than Ireland (which I have studied), I had originally wanted to address the issues of Northern Ireland in my book. Then I decided that it was such a complicated issue. I am very happy that they passed the very recent referendum, which had to be voted in the Republic of Ireland as well as Northern Ireland, and I think they are getting closer to a compromise than they have ever gotten in the problems between England and Ireland. I think because it has been in the news a lot lately, many people see things from one point of view, and it is actually a lot more complicated than that. To say one side is right and the other wrong is not looking at the whole picture. What they are doing now is making everybody compromise. There has been 30 years of bloodshed because they wouldn't give an inch, so I am hopeful.
James from Akron, OH: What a fantastic cover! How much influence did you get in the design of the final book cover? Or did they not give you much say because you are a first-time novelist?
Lisa Carey: They asked for my input, and they came up with six different designs of the cover and chose the one they liked best. They took my suggestion, but they didn't use it; they compromised and used some images from the painting that I wanted. They gave me more input than I heard most authors have.
Danika Byrne from New York: How did you "get inside" the minds of your characters in such a believable way?
Lisa Carey: That is hard for me to answer, because I am glad and flattered that you think it is a believable way, but when I was writing it I wasn't sure. When people ask me how I write about people older than me and people who I don't know much about, the answer is by reading a lot. When you read a lot, you develop an ability to make readers like and believe your characters. During the writing process of the book, I didn't do anything but write this book, 12 hours a day. I was living the lives of my characters, and it was better than if I were to just write two hours a day.
Ilona from Miami: Your book made me so emotional. I just wondered if there was any one experience or person in your life that inspired this story.
Lisa Carey: No, there wasn't one person or experience. It is a fictional story, so it isn't based on any people or events in my life, but the sum of my personal experiences added to the book. I was living in Ireland as a foreigner and trying to go through everyday life there and settle in, and I fell in love with the country and felt in touch many times, yet felt out of place many times as well. That is one of the themes of the book -- moving around and settling in. And that influenced me.
Jayanth from India: How did you work out the seemingly complex narrative, which involves three main characters?
Lisa Carey: First I can say that I decided to write the book from three different points of view because I had never written a novel before and I thought I might not have enough to say from one voice. Once I settled on the three voices I wrote it from the beginning to the end. I would write a chapter from one point of view, stop switch my view and write from another point of view. By doing this I was able to get all three characters reacting to the same themes and situations.
Aileen from San Francisco, CA: Would you say Ireland -- the land and history -- was your primary influence behind this book?
Lisa Carey: Yes.
Larry Weissman from New York, NY: Lisa, I loved your novel. I've read that you spent a lot of time living on islands. Can you tell me what attracts you to island life?
Lisa Carey: I've always been attracted to island life because in some way they are like miniature countries, in that you can go to them and learn about a culture and a way of speaking that they won't have on the mainland. They are also limited in their resources. I think that islands don't have the distractions of city life and small-town life. Without the distractions of everyday life, I have a better environment for me to write in. If you'd like to know more about my experience with island life, you can read an essay that I wrote, on the literary magazine Bold Type (www.boldtype.com).
Jossie from NYC: If you knew what you know now back before you got published, what would you have done differently on the road to getting published? Any pearls of wisdom you could drop to an aspiring author?
Lisa Carey: I think that having an agent was the best thing that ever happened to me, so badger all of your author friends for their agents numbers. The experience of publishing a book is a lot different than what I thought. It is also a lot more work than I thought. It has been almost a full-time job since I wrote the book. My advice would be to write five books before you get anything publishing. Also, the MFA program I did was great. It definitely helps your writing and will give you contacts for when you want to get published.
Catherine Wiley from Lancaster, PA: How much time have you spent in Ireland?
Lisa Carey: I have spent about four months of every one of the past four years living in Ireland. And I am about to go back in July.
Paul from Pac87@aol.com: Good evening, Ms. Carey. Were you worried or nervous when you decided to quit your job to go to Ireland to start this book?
Lisa Carey: Yes! I was quite nervous. What I actually did was, I took a leave of absence from my job, and I sort of put myself out on a limb to write this book. I was working in a bookstore and was not making too much money, and for my MFA program I had a bunch of loans. I then took out more loan money to finance my trip to Ireland, and I was hoping I would eventually get published and make the money back. But when you are an artist you have to take risks, because otherwise you will never do it.
Jayanth from India: Do you make elaborate notes of people around you? How do you shape your characters?
Lisa Carey: I do make elaborate notes of people around me, specifically in Ireland. I wrote down anything that anybody said that I thought sounded interesting, because I wanted to write from an Irish voice. My characters usually start from a very small idea that either comes from an actual person or a story I have heard or my imagination, then once I start writing them, they become who they are. I don't know who they are when they begin. Sometimes they surprise me in what they end up doing.
Nicole from Sudbury, MA: If you had to do it over again, do you think an MFA is a necessity to becoming a great published author?
Lisa Carey: I don't think it is a necessity for everyone, but it was the best thing for me. I don't think I would change anything -- things have been going pretty well for me. Writing is a very difficult thing to commit yourself to. Most people think of it as a hobby, and it doesn't normally help to pay the bills. I am not a self-disciplined person, and I needed the structure of school to be able to challenge myself. But that is not the same for everyone.
Pam from Kent, Connecticut: Any advice for young writers?
Lisa Carey: My ultimate advice for young writers is to read. I spent more time reading novels than I do writing fiction. Most people, when asked this question, would tell me to write everyday. I am the exception. I don't have stuff to write about every day, so I don't write everyday, and I won't give those pearls of wisdom that I was always told. But for some it does work. You should always challenge yourself by writing about the kind of thing you thought you would never write about. A lot of people say you should write what you know, which is true, but you should also write about things you think you don't know about. This helps you form a better detail to your writing. It makes you a better writer, writing from the point of view of someone you don't completely understand.
Andrea Giery from San Francisco: I loved your book so much. I've told everyone I know about it. Are you working on another novel?
Lisa Carey: Thank you for supporting my book. I was working on another novel, which I put on hold for my book tour. When I write I have to have no distractions, so hopefully soon I will be able to get back to the book. I am superstitious, so I don't tell people what it is about, but it does have a bit of Ireland in it, a little hint....
Moderator: Thank you once again for joining us tonight, Lisa Carey, and congratulations on your debut! Before you go, do you have any last words for your online audience?
Lisa Carey: First I would like to thank everybody for taking the time to write in. It has been a very flattering hour, because I am talking to so many people I don't know who have read my book. The reason writers want to get published is so other people will read them. The reason I decided to become a writer is so I could touch people's lives in the way books have touched mine, and it makes me happy to see that I am doing it a little bit. The only other thing I would like to mention is that, in addition to Bold Type, I would suggest the Bard page online (www.avonbooks.com/bard), and then there is a bookstore in Galway, which is where I used to live, which is the best Irish bookstore in the world. Desmond Kenny, the owner, will talk to you, and if you are interested in Irish fiction and nonfiction, he will put together packages for you. They are books that you can't get outside of Ireland. I have received a new package from Desmond every month now. He is online at queries@www.kennys.ie.