In the week that Audrey Niffeneger bucked the economic crisis in publishing, gaining an advance of almost $5 million for her second novel, Fiona Egglestone met up with her here in Falmouth to hear how she went from unknown writer to a bestselling author fought over by all the major publishing houses.
Tell us a a little about becoming a bestselling author
'The bestselling part of The Time Traveler's Wife was pretty unexpected. We chose my tiny little publisher because they seemed so enthusiastic. We knew the book would sell 5,000 copies. I wanted to write a novel and be published. My expectations really ended there.
What made it was the Today show. I’ve come to the conclusion that nobody reads anything unless television tells them to read it. Then over here there was the Richard and Judy show. Between those two things, it really catapulted the novel into this realm that I never imagined I could get anywhere near.
It’s been interesting, because it’s given me the opportunity to see the book world from top to bottom. I’ve had the independent experience and the great big paperback publisher experience. It’s sort of like doing a post-doc in publishing. The fact that the book succeeded in the market was like a ticket to see all of this. It’s really been an education.'
You had a lot to live up to after such an amazing beginning to your career as a novelist. Was writing your second novel as difficult as we all assume it is?
'I started Her Fearful Symmetry in 2002, as soon as I finished The Time Traveler’s Wife. I got slowed down by doing all the promotion for TTW, which lasted about three years.
It’s really hard to start work if you stop working – it’s hard to get back into it. If TTW had been received in a normal fashion, it would still have been difficult to do a second book. Nobody expects anything from your first novel: you do it to please yourself. With the second one, especially in the age of the internet, everyone is constantly communicating with you about what they would like – "please write a sequel". You have to be quiet for a long time before you can do the thing you should be doing.'
So how did you get down to the writing? Tell us something about your approach to plotting and structure, which was such a striking part of your first novel.
'The Time Traveler’s Wife was written completely out of order. I had two timelines: one is Clare’s chronology, the other one shows where Henry is coming from, where he is going to, what the reader would know and what Henry and Clare know in that situation.
A lot of the book is about giving and withholding knowledge and that’s true from me to the reader as well as from Henry to Clare and Clare to Henry. A lot of the structure is determined by "the reveal."
Essentially it’s like doing a giant jigsaw puzzle. I was able to pick things up and move them around really fluidly; the book had several different structures before I finally settled on one.
You have to have something when you start. With The Time Traveler’s Wife, the basic story is so simple: boy meets girl, girl meets boy, courtship, marriage, child, death, what happens after he dies. That’s the entire plot. Of course Henry is living out of order and has rather odd experiences so the embroidery is fabulous, but the actual structure is incredibly simple.
With Her Fearful Symmetry I didn’t have the foggiest idea what I was doing. I had two completely unrelated stories that I decided to hook up. When I started writing I wrote what turned out to be the middle. Then I thought something must have happened before that and before that.... I kept backing up until I got to the point that was the start – the event that sets everything off, but you can’t really know that when you start writing.'
And how did you play with point of view?
'In the first book, I found Henry a lot easier to write than Clare because Henry is my natural voice. Clare is more restrained and not nearly as flamboyant as Henry. It was a little hard to hold back and be her but after a while – it’s a 600 page manuscript – you just get used to it.
Her Fearful Symmetry has nine major characters and all of them are point of view characters. I was working using close third and it was an amazing thing to learn to do. I was trying to get into everybody’s heads in a way that it would be very fluid and you could jump from person to person without the reader feeling confused.'
Do you have any advice for aspiring novelists?
'I think if you think you want to write novels, just get on with it – don’t practise with short stories.
The art world is becoming self referential and it has been for some time. Certain parts of the literary world are getting like that too – we’re just making books about books and stories about stories. People have to educate themselves about other stuff; they have to go out and actually live life and know about things other than writing.
If you read widely you will see what has already been done. One of the things that anyone who teaches or works at a publisher notices that you see the same story over and over again. People need to be more flexible in their thinking and how they structure and tell stories. There is only limited number of stories, but there’s no point in people writing in imitation of other writers.'
