Writer, Carol Goodman
Interviewed by B. Lynn Goodwin

Concocting Ideas

I started writing when I was nine when my fourth grade teacher introduced the subject of creative writing, said Carol Goodman when I asked her about her writing background in our e-mail interview.

Goodman, whose writing lures readers with layers of mystery, interwoven stories, and complex, finely-etched characters. is the author of The Lake of Dead Languages , The Seduction of Water, and The Drowning Tree . When Jane Hudson returns to the Heart Lake School in the Adirondacks in The Lake of Dead Languages, campus history and mythology mix and the lake begins reclaiming lives again. We watch with fascination and horror as the lake turns deadly and history repeats itself. In The Seduction of Water, Iris Greenfelder returns to the hotel in the Catskills where she grew up in the hopes of finding her dead mother's missing manuscript. Both books are filled with mystery, lust, adventure, and an unusual mix of fascinating people and issues.

Goodman went on to say, I wrote a 90 page crayon-illlustrated epic called "The Adventures of the Magical Herd, in which an imaginary character named Carol lived with a herd of wild animals. No human family is ever mentioned. I was so hooked that my teacher had to call a parent-teacher conference to request that I do my other work,

With honesty and humor, she revealed a great deal about her ideas and writing process in the Q & A below.

LG: How did your education influence your writing?

CG: I decided to do something practical so I majored in Latin in college. I didn't start writing again until my last semester at Vassar. I've always been sorry I didn't avail myself of the excellent writing teachers that were at Vassar, but I do think that the Latin major was a good grounding for a writer. Aside from the obvious language assets (grammar, vocabulary) studying Latin gave me the kind of discipline you need to write a novel and, as it turned out, it provided the subject of my first (published) novel.

In my twenties I wrote short stories and again sent them out to impractical places. I got discouraged, so I went back to school to get certified to teach high school. It was in my last semester that I started writing again--this time a young adult fantasy novel called The Door To Tirra Glynn (Yes, the same title as Iris's mother's novel in The Seduction of Water ).

That novel and the next one I wrote went unpublished and I might have given up again, but I didn't. Maybe because my next foray into academia was an MFA program, or because I met my husband who gave me a lot of encouragement ... or I finally realized that I was going to keep doing this for better or worse.

LG: In The Seduction of Water, I love Iris's intelligence contrasted against her ABD (All But Dissertation) status. How did you discover her? Did the story start with her or someplace else?

CG: Seduction of Water very much started with the character of Iris. I was particularly interested in writing about someone who saw herself as a failure because I've had a lot of false starts in my own life.

It was easier to write about this after the publication of my first book, a little measure of success that gave me just enough breathing room to turn and look at that specter which, I've come to realize, never wholly disappears just regroups and takes new shape.

LG: Which characters fascinated you more, the ones in The Seduction of Water or the ones in The Lake of Dead Languages ?

CG: That's hard to say. With a gun to my head, though, I'd have to say that the secondary characters in Seduction of Water are richer. Iris's life is wider than Jane's and she's exposed to a greater variety of people through her college teaching. I can still vividly picture Mr. Nagamora swooping around Iris's class while he tells his Crane Wife story and poor Gretchen Lu maiming her hands trying to knit nettles.

LG: Those were rich scenes. Did you discover anything in Lake that influenced you in Seduction ?

CG: Lake did shape The Seduction of Water . I consciously wanted to do a number of things differently. For instance, I felt I had said everything I could about ice and winter, so Seduction takes place between the vernal equinox and the autumnal equinox. I wanted to write a character who didn't have a child, and I also wanted at least part of the book to take place in an urban setting.

Of course, there are plenty of similarities between the books. I am still interested in exploring how an event in the past informs the present, but in Seduction I wanted the past to reach further back--into the 1940's. I still wanted to use an element of myth, but I chose fairytales instead of Greek and Roman mythology.

LG: Tell us about your process.

CG: Lake of Dead Languages started with a story I wrote in the mid-nineties about a Latin teacher at a boarding school. When I came back to the story what struck me was how alone the character Jane was and I started concocting ideas of how she came to that place, what happened in her past that cut her off from other people and her own emotions.

That novel probably had more of a percolation period than the next, but I think I generally start with an image of a character in a place and then start asking myself how she (it's usually a she) got there. I allow myself to daydream about that character for a few months and then I start writing notes and then the notes start turning into sentences and paragraphs.

I also start researching during this period. For instance, for Seduction of Water I reread fairy tales, read about old hotels in the Catskills and visited the Catskills. Often the research will lead me to ideas about the plot. I write in the same black and white marbled notebooks that Jane used in Lake and I start filling these with notes, fragments, diagrams, plans. I do a little outlining, but I never have the whole book outlined.

There's usually a moment when the tension between what I know and what I don't know pushes me to start writing. In general I trust the decisions I make while writing more than the decisions I make when planning. I do, however, jot down notes for the next chapter when I finish one chapter, and I also stop twice in the book (a third through, then 2/3s through) to reread and plan for the next section. Very often the book turns out differently than I first imagined it because the characters develop as I write, and I'd rather the plot come out of the characters than vice versa.

LG: What is your writing schedule like?

CG: I always take a walk after my daughter goes to school and then sit down at my desk to work. At the beginning of a book I might write for two hours and pass out from exhaustion (because, I think, you have to create the whole world at the beginning) but as I get going I usually work for four to five hours (and then pass out from exhaustion). I don't count on writing once my daughter gets home for school or during weekends, but I'm often thinking about the book and jotting down notes.

Both books took nine months to write with a few months of percolating before that.

LG: How did you select people to read your early drafts and make suggestions?

CG: I've had a group of friends who have been reading my drafts since the first book I wrote and I always send my first draft out to them. Aside from being supportive (my first criterion) I've come to count on each one to notice and comment on different aspects of the book. One will pick up character inconsistencies, another will have great wardrobe suggestions.

My husband reads the book, chapter by chapter, as I write it and his advice is invaluable. He's a much better grammarian than me (or is that I?) and has an unfailing eye for eliminating unlikely situations. If not for him Jane and Roy would have consummated their passion outside in the middle of an electric storm. Having someone looking forward to reading each chapter also makes the whole process less lonely.

LG: Are there any writing organizations which have been useful to you?

CG: I'm not much of an organization-joiner, but I do think that taking writing workshops and doing the MFA at The New School improved my writing skills. Finding a community of writers is invaluable both for the support it offers and for informed feedback.

LG: know you just published The Drowning Tree , another intelligent and literate mystery. What are you working on now?

CG: I'm working on my fourth book, which is called Blackwell . It's set in upstate New York at an estate called Bosco. The narrative alternates between the present when the estate is an artists' colony and 1893 when a famous medium, Corinth Blackwell, visited Bosco and held two seances there.

I've had a lot of fun reading about Italian Renaissance gardens (and nineteenth century spiritualism and Adirondack history); I'm planning a trip to Italy this summer and I would like to set my next book in Italy . I spent my junior year abroad in Rome and have always wanted to write something set there.

LG: I like the way the fifth novel is brewing in your head even as you are working on the fourth one.

Carol Goodman is an author to watch. Her stories are as rich as a decadent chocolate desert. Indulge yourself in the wonderful stories and fabulous imagery. Her books are available in most bookstores and libraries.