So for all of my books, all of my books start out with a box, because I can’t write a book right away. I have to think about a book for a long time. And when I start thinking about a book I get a box. And sometimes it’s a shoe box or something it’s an old Amazon box or something. And I will start to let things accumulate in a book into the box. And you know sometimes it will be a sentence that pleases me or sometimes it will be some notes about a character or sometimes it will be some things that are true about the magic.
For The Girl Who Drank the Moon, that book started with a poem and a swamp monster. I was out for a run and I was on this beautiful little wooded trail and I had this sudden image in my head of a swamp monster with four arms and a very long tail and wide damp jaws and one thing that never made it into the book is that his eyes moved independently of one another and he was holding a daisy and he recited a poem.
And the thing is that I don’t think in pictures very often, it’s very rare for me actually.
I think in language, I think in sounds. I think in smells and I think in touch. But I really don’t think in images at all. But when I do get these unbidden visions, this like bright, really sharp picture. So first of all it exhausts me when it happens. But I always pay attention to it. So I stood there and I memorized the poem and I ran home and I wrote the poem down. And it was the heart is built of starlight and time, a pin prick of longing lost in the dark, etc., etc., which is the last poem that appears in the book.
And I wrote it down and I never changed it, I didn’t change a single word. And so I stared at the poem like what is this? And I just wrote it down on a little note card and then I turned the note card over and I wrote the words swamp monster. And then I stared at that for a little bit and then I wrote his name is Glerk. And then I was like well, crikey, this is a book I think. And so I got a box and I put it in the box.
And so over time I put all kinds of things in the box. I drew a picture of the grand elder Garland’s robes and I drew a picture of the tree house that Xan lived in and I drew a picture of one of the dresses that Luna wore and I wrote poems and I wrote things that were true in the protectorate, I did a lot of research on bogs, because bogs are cool.
And I talked a lot, I wrote a lot about Xan’s magic, I wrote a lot about Xan’s history, just little tiny bits and pieces. And they would all just go in the box. And I usually have to think about a book for about two years, sometimes more, before I can start to write about it. And so by the time I write, I know a lot about what the magic feels like. And I know a lot about what the world smells like and I know a lot about what the bark of the trees feels like, and I know a lot about the texture of people’s hair and I know a lot about the clothes that they wear, because I’ve thought about all of those things.
And so part of getting ready to write a book is to be in that place and to be in that world and to just pay attention. And to pay attention to things that even your characters don’t notice.
I don’t always know how the story is going to end, but I know all the details.