Five with Fisher - Anita Kelly

Welcome to a new segment on The Writing Folks! In this segment, I provide authors with a list of questions (fifteen, actually) that I think are a little more interesting, a little more challenging, than your typical interview questions. The author must then choose five of those questions to answer, so we can get a deeper dive into their psyche, their process, their bookish existence!

Our first victim guest is Anita Kelly, author of the exquisite Love & Other Disasters, the exciting (forthcoming!) Something Wild & Wonderful, and the completely lovely series of Moonlighter novellas.

So let’s dive right in and see what Anita had to say!

1. Tell me about an “inside joke” that made it past all the edits to the printed page.

I’m not sure if I have any actual inside jokes in my books, but in my journey in traditional publishing, I definitely thought I’d get more pushback about random dumb things I sometimes throw in. I’ve actually been surprised at how much, in fact, gets through without a single comment. One example I can think of is that in my debut, Love & Other Disasters, there’s an interlude right before the characters are about to bang for the first time where they discuss what an amazing song “The Chain” by Fleetwood Mac is, even though it is not truly relevant to the scene or book at all. I just think “The Chain” is a really amazing song and must have been listening to it before I wrote that scene or something. I always thought my editor would cut it, but nope! Now my Fleetwood Mac appreciation is in print forever and it delights me!

There are also a ton of tiny nods to things in my real life in all of my books. It’s a privilege, I think, to do so, to have little inside jokes with myself, in a way, when I memorialize something from my own life on the page.

There are definitely times, though, to be clear, when I include some strange joke or aside in my manuscripts and my editor is (kindly) like…maybe not. Haha.

2. Tell me about naming things. Characters! Books! Where do you struggle, and what do you love?

I love naming characters! I often go to Twitter when I need to name a character, especially side characters, and simply scroll my timeline until my brain snags on a name that I think would work. Main character names I usually think about a bit more; I do a lot of googling of popular baby names and such to find something that feels right.

Book titles, on the other hand, I am horrible at. And my editor would agree. I would very much love if anyone else could name all of my books forever.

3. Give me an unexpected or strange piece of writing advice.

I don’t know if this is strange or unexpected, and I am generally anti-most writing advice, haha, but one thing I have learned in my process is that at about the 75% mark of writing a brand new draft, most likely your brain will be very tired and you’ll be ready to just be done with the damn thing. I always let myself take a break from drafting at this point, and reread everything I have from start to finish. This lets me remember the heart of the story, what I’ve accomplished so far, and what I want to accomplish from the ending. Having the entirety of the first 75% fresh in my mind always gives me the momentum to draft the ending feeling strong and re-invested in the story.

And when you are done with a first draft (or feeling stuck with a draft, at any point), it’s always a good idea to re-read it back to yourself in a different medium than just staring at your computer screen—either having it read to you via text-to-speech, reading it out loud yourself, or uploading it to your e-reader of choice and reading it there. The last one is what I do, and the words ALWAYS flow differently to me when I’m reading my work on a Kindle instead of on my computer. This always helps me tweak language to how I want it to flow.

4. Who’s your favorite side character (from any novel, yours or otherwise!) that you think deserves their own spinoff, and why?

I love side characters, even though in my own work, since I’m always so focused on my main characters, I often don’t dig into the side characters in as meaningful a way as other writers are able to pull off. 

In my upcoming novel, Something Wild & Wonderful, one of the main characters, Ben, has a younger sister, Carolina, who is about to set off for college. She’s super into social justice, is an overachieving academic, wants to be a senator. She’s just full of that youthful rage and vigor about the world, you know? But right before she’s set to graduate high school, she has this kind of freak out, where she lets herself be a kid for once and admit that she’s scared. Like, all she’s ever wanted is to get out of her hometown and go to college, but now that it’s actually here, she’s like, fuck. What if I don’t know what the hell I’m doing? Because she’s still young enough to think that she should, to believe that anyone knows what the hell they’re doing.

I’ve thought multiple times since finishing the book about how I’d love to see where Carolina’s story goes—what happens when she leaves Nashville for Boston University. I imagine her getting even more into social justice issues on campus, having passionate love affairs. Learning how to balance wanting to burn it all down and finding peace for herself. I don’t have any plans to actually write anything further of her story, at least as of now, but I don’t know, I just hope things work out for her, and often wonder how she’s doing, what she’s angry about today and what she’s doing about it.

5. Has becoming a writer changed you as a person? How so?

Yes and no. I think in many ways, returning to writing fiction brought me back to myself. I had always wanted to be a writer, ever since I was a little kid, but then the real world kind of beat it out of me and I abandoned it for about a decade. When I finally came back around to it, allowing myself to believe in my dream of being a writer again, it felt like I got this big piece of my childhood self back.

Since writing has become more my actual career, I’d also say that it has made me both more and less lonely, as well. Writing is, at its core, a very lonely pursuit, and I feel that even more acutely with every stage of success I meet. It’s also a pursuit that is very difficult to explain to other people, for a variety of reasons. At the same time, I have met so many people through my publishing journey, so many people that I love so dearly, that sometimes it almost overwhelms me. I’m someone who’s always struggled to make new friends as an adult, so getting to suddenly have this huge circle of people who get it, who feel like My People, is so incredible.

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Anita, thank you so much for being my first guest for Five with Fisher! Your answers are a true delight. Everyone, make sure you get your orders for Something Wild & Wonderful in as soon as you can, from all of your favorite book retailers.

As for you other Writing Folks… your time is coming.

MWAHAHAHA!