20 minutes with Diana Gabaldon
Simonne Walmsley sat down with bestselling author
of the Cross Stitch series Diana Gabaldon to talk about the latest
instalment, An Echo in the
Bone.
It's quite a big ask, when meeting someone as
extraordinary as Diana Gabaldon, not to think about how impressed
you are. As I sat down in the lobby of Auckland's Westin Hotel
across from the New York Times No. 1 best-selling author of An Echo
in the Bone, the latest book in the Cross Stitch series, I must
confess that my brains fell out of my ears. Frantic mental efforts
to re-harness intelligent thought certainly weren't helped, either,
when the reality of 20 minutes with the woman who has written seven
tomes averaging close to 1,000 pages each also sunk in at this
rather badly timed moment.
Diana Gabaldon (pronounced
Gabble-done - to rhyme with stone - if you've wondered), who holds
degrees in Zoology, Marine Biology, Quantitative Behavioural
Ecology and an honorary degree of Doctor of Humane Letters, has a
number of other impressive achievements to her name, including
founding the scientific computation journal Science Software
Quarterly. She's also written comic book scripts for Walt Disney
and is a born story-teller - and that's the trap. As soon as she
starts talking, I want nothing more than to order a coffee, sit
back in my chair, and simply let her go in whatever direction she
wants. That's the rub with being a fan as well.
Diana, in turn, appears to take my fascination and run
with it, and we manage to cover quite a lot of ground, including
the rather unexpected and charming tale of how her housekeeper came
to join her household.
Slightly more on topic, we discussed the progression of the books
through the years and increasing awareness of the mortality of the
aging characters, heightened by the death of the elder Ian from
consumption, an emotional storyline that Diana told me she found
very distressing to write. This led me to ask whether she has ever
missed a character so much that she has considered bringing them
back. Before I even fnish my sentence, she tells me, "Oh, yes. I
miss Murtagh very much."
And so, The Exile, a graphic novel scheduled for release
next September, set within the parameters of Cross Stitch but with
a completely new narrative line and beginning slightly before
Cross Stitch began, is told from the points of view of
Murtagh and Jamie.
I ask, even though I'm not sure I want to know the answer, whether
she knows where and when the story ends, and I am relieved when she
says no, not exactly. "I have the final scene, because it
came to me some years ago, and when things pop up I write them
down. So I do know the final scene, but I have no idea where it
takes place or when, and I have not the slightest idea how we get
to that spot." She needs to get all of the way through the American
Revolution, at least, and is now dealing with four storylines from
An Echo in the Bone, so doesn't know whether she can tie
everything off in one more book. In her matter-of-fact way, she
says, "If I can, fine. If I can't, then there'll have to be nine."
I do like the idea of nine books.
It seems incredible now that Cross Stitch was a practice
novel, written by Diana to learn how to write a novel, and which
she never intended to show anyone.
Incomprehensible to me, though, is that when she wrote it, she had
a full-time job, another part-time job, a home, a husband, and
three small children. I imagined that considering what she
has achieved, her advice to anyone with a goal they wish to realise
would be invaluable, and I wanted it.
It's a thought familiar to me when she tells me that often young
women say to her they feel so guilty taking any time to do what it
is they want to do. Her response to this is blunt, to say the
least.
"I say, 'Do you watch television?' and they say, "Oh yes, of
course.' And I say, 'You don't feel that you're depriving your
family of anything by watching television for four hours a day?'
and they say, 'No...' And I say, 'Good. Use some of that time. Stop
watching television four hours a day. You'll have a lot more time."
Her advice can be applied to everything from getting the dishes
done every night to, well, writing best-selling novels.
"What you have to do is go to work instead and it's difficult,
because there's this, we call it energy of inertia in a chemical
reaction - sometimes you have to add energy in the form of heat in
order to make a reaction go. It's the same way, when you're getting
to work especially on something like this, you have to push
yourself to actually do it. Once you are doing it, well, there you
are, but you have to make that first step, which is
hard."
Diana continues, "You have to alter the shape of your day, and if
this involves other people it's going to seem daunting and all
that, but really they accept it fairly easily as long as you're not
inconveniencing them to any great extent. The only thing that you
have to do there is remember to do it every day. It doesn't matter
that you don't have four hours to work on it. That would be nice,
if you had four hours to work on it, but you're not going to get
that so if you've got 10 minutes, work on it then."
I was nowhere near ready to leave when Diana's publicist stood up,
giving me an apologetic smile because we've not only run through
our time-slot, but we've run quite a way over, considering how
tightly-packed the schedule is for her New Zealand tour. So, as I
turn off my recorder and reiterate what a pleasure it was to meet
her, I ask Diana one last question, because I have to know. Does
she have any guilty pleasures?
Diana looks absolutely nonplussed for a moment, starts and stops
more than once as she thinks, and then replies, "I just never
thought of being guilty about anything I like." Just like that, she
has secured my eternal adoration.
Simonne Walmsley, mother of one-yeaar-old Cuinn, has been a fan
of Diana Gabaldon for half her life, and was quite relieved she
didn't faint during the interview.
As seen in OHbaby!
magazine Issue 9: 2010
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