Regina Sirois is author of On Little Wings, winner of the 2012 Amazon Breakthrough Novel Award. She was published by Penguin and continues to write for young adults. Regina also enjoys speaking to educators and directly to her young adult audience, advocating for quality literature in American schools. She is pursuing a graduate degree in English Education so she can further her work with the YA audience that she loves. Catch up with Regina Sirois on her blog: tapperandcompany.blogspot.com |
I met Regina four years ago through Artist Interrupted, a women’s art collective in Kansas City. I’ve since gotten to know her as not only an excellent writer, but also a devoted teacher, mother, and friend. It was a true pleasure to sit and discuss writing with her.
K
When I first went to your house it was easy to see that you are the type of person who exudes creativity in so many aspects of life. Tell me a little about what creativity means in your life, even above and beyond writing
R
So that’s a really strong force in my life. I think it shows in my choice to marry an artist and someone who would help me in my quest to make creativity a big part of family life.
K
Did you realize when you met your husband how important his creativity would be for your relationship?
R
Oh yes, I knew that he had ideas in his head and he wanted to let them blossom and he wanted to let my mind blossom, and this was just kind of a mutual decision. If he’d been somebody too pragmatic it wouldn’t work. I needed an adventurous mind, someone who would dream with me, but I also consider us really practical people. It’s just that we give creativity a place in our life. Not full reign, and we don’t reign it in too much, but we give it the correct channel I think.
The way we do that is we have a mutual passion for art. We spent last Thursday taking our girls to the art museum and then to Shakespeare in the park. It’s just exposing them. They don’t even understand everything that Shakespeare does, but they laughed and they got scared and they understood enough, and they’re getting enough exposure that it won’t scare them later when they try to dive in.
Art is kind of our measure of how much we like a city. Whenever we visit somewhere new it’s like, ‘do we like this city?’ ‘I don’t know, let’s go to the art museum and find out.’ I’m like a creativity vampire, I just suck it in and love to consume it.
And the other one is nature. We surround ourselves and participate in nature. We spend time outside, hiking and taking camping trips. We just want our girls to see what it looks like when water goes down a stream and when a leaf floats in the water. We just want these images burned in their minds, and I need them in mine. Even if I’ve seen it a hundred times, I’ve never seen it quite like that before and these images become really important to me in my life. So observation is one way that I practice creativity. It’s just to look.
K
And you were like this as a child?
R
Yes, I spent a lot of time alone outside, just looking. I would sit—like I’d pick a plant out in the middle of the field and I would say, ‘This is my favorite one.’ And it would look like all the others but I would think, ‘I’m paying attention to this one. ‘ And the image is still burned in my mind. I mean I picked this weed and decided it was the most beautiful weed, and I still see the stripes of white and gold and I would visit it almost daily, just checking on my weed. I just felt like there was so much beauty that doesn’t even get seen. I thought, ‘why did God put this beautiful thing in a field and no one is around to see it? And the whole earth is covered with this beauty whether we are there to see it or not.’ So I make it a point to try to go look for it and make it be seen.
K
Where does your family go hiking around Kansas?
R
We do Ernie Miller nature center. We also go to lakes and take country rides and just find gravel roads that we don’t know. I don’t like doing drives so much as driving to somewhere and getting out because I don’t like the barrier of the window between me and the world. I want to go somewhere and touch it. We spend half of our time walking in the art museum and the other half walking the grounds around the art museum so we can see God’s art and people’s art, and they both go so well together. We’re just about to take a trip camping and rafting in the Ozarks.
K
Well you need to keep us posted on your journey. Moving on, you describe yourself as a reader first and a writer second. Explain…
R
Well I’ve written in my entire life one book that’s on a shelf, but I’ve read I don’t even know how many thousands. So therefore I feel much more qualified as a reader than as a writer. I have given the world far fewer words than I have consumed. And I’m a reader first because when I write it’s always with a reader in mind. And really the reader in mind is myself. How would I want this moment described. Because in my mind the story is solid. I will not change the story for the reader, but the question is how would I want this story represented to them? Because I’m not going to say, for the reader’s sake this person should not die. If that person dies they die. I’m a history major, so for me it happened how it happened, but now how will I tell the people how it happened? So when a story is in my head, it has happened to me. It’s a historical fact in my brain.
K
So do you not feel like you sit there at moments and try to make a decision about what happens next in your writing? You feel like it just comes to you?
R
I know this sounds really schizophrenic, but there are times when I don’t know what happens next but I never feel like I decide. I feel like I sit down and I watch the movie play out in my mind. I go to my character and I say, “Megan what happened?” And I sit and I hear her story. Whatever little part of me is controlling that character is somehow separate from the other parts of me, and it just tells me what happened and then I accept the story and go from there.
K
100% of the time?
R
I can’t think of a divergence.
K
Shotgun questions. Are you ready? Tell me the first thing that comes to mind:
K: Favorite book R: I Capture the Castle
K: Favorite Author: R: David McCullough
K: Book that first stole your heart R: Wait till Helen Comes
K: Book that made you want to be a writer R:I Capture the Castle. It’s the best piece of writing I’ve ever read. It’s the book I go back to and say, ‘Oh not there yet.’ I don’t know if I’ll ever be there, but it’s the book I measure by.
K: Favorite book to read to your girls R: Wrinkle in Time
K: Book that everyone must read once R: Moby Dick
K: Book that made you cry R: All Quiet on the Western Front
K
Do you have any strange writing quirks?
R
I don’t know if this is strange. I think lots of people are this way, but writing exhausts me. I am physically exhausted after one hour of writing, and hungry and just physically done. So I rarely ever write for more than an hour. That’s my limit.
K
It’s like you are channeling your characters and it wipes you out.
R
Yes, it’s like being a movie director and you’re just running around and wondering ‘Which point of view? How do I capture this story?’ And trying to figure out the best way to capture it and pass it on to someone else. It’s just mentally exhausting.
K
Where do you get the courage to pursue writing, especially where you raise up these incredible writers and masterpieces. How do you find the courage to even try?
R
Maybe its anti-courage. My biggest courage comes from humility. I have to think, ‘Nobody is looking at me. Nobody is waiting for what I say, and most people wont even notice.’ So in that spirit of anonymity, I can just move forward and say I can do this. Like you don’t want to walk outside naked, but if you were invisible it wouldn’t be that big of a deal. So in the world of writing there’s just a lot of anonymity because there are millions of stories that will never be published. So I feel slightly invisible and that gives me the courage to put it out there exactly the way I need to put it out there and just tell myself, ‘no one is going to read it anyway.’
K
Do you get a thrill when you find out people read your book?
R
I get a thrill in mass. So like if I go to Amazon and see a thousand people read my book I think that’s thrilling. If one person comes up to me and says I’m reading your book, that is not thrilling to me, that is scary. I usually say ‘thank you that is so nice,’ and then quickly divert to a question about them because I don’t want to discuss the book or their experience reading it.
K
So you don’t want to know what people think about your books?
R
No I don’t, not even with compliments. But I would be sad it no one read it. I guess I want people to read it and not tell me about it. I like it best when I have some distance. People will talk to me about On Little Wings and I can get comfortable about it as long as we talk about the characters and not about me or my writing.
K
What advice do you have for fellow writers?
R
Don’t be afraid to writer. Fear comes from failure so quickly decide what failure is and stick to it. Because success is a moving target. And you’re going to be tempted to move your target and say I will succeed if I get an agent. And then you will move your target and say I will succeed if my agent sells it. And then you will move your target and say I will succeed if my publisher gives this some good advertising and gets it into Barnes and Noble. And if that happens you will move your target again. And what happens is you move your target every time and then eventually there will be a target you don’t hit unless you’re a miracle worker and there are about ten of them in the writing word. And then you will say, ‘I failed.’ And you will ignore the fact that before that there were ten targets that you bullseyed—you bullseyed them, you accomplished it. But because you kept moving your target, you think you failed. And it’s not fair and it makes me angry that we do that to ourselves. So quickly decide what success is. And that doesn’t mean you stop there. Don’t be afraid to move on once you hit your goal, but hold onto the success you already found and say, ‘Next I will try this.’ But know that you already succeeded. And if you don’t get that next target you don’t have to worry.
K
What are your thoughts on self-publishing?
R
I think its great. But as we are seeing more people self publishing than not, you are in the same place as you were before in trying to get on the shelf. The competition is stiff and getting stiffer. But if you want to use self-publishing as a vehicle to make your book available, then it’s a great way to do that. It’s not a great way to put your thumb in your mouth and stick it to the man in the publishing world, but it’s a great way to produce a book and have it available. The only reason I hesitate ever about self publishing is because of the climate of publishing world, it’s really hard to get into schools and get with the kids unless you are traditionally published. And that is what I’m after. I write for young adults and I want to be with my readers. Other than that, self-publishing for me was more lucrative, more empowering, and I loved it.
K
What are you reading these days?
R
History. I love going to used book stores and browsing the history section and just scanning the titles. I’ve been onto medical history for the last two years but I take little branches off and I peruse used bookstores to see what I can find. I test books out by opening to a random page and reading a few paragraphs to make sure the book isn’t dry, because there is nothing as bad as dry history. But as long as the storytelling is good, then I can read about anything.
Catch up with Regina Sirois on her blog: tapperandcompany.blogspot.com
When I first went to your house it was easy to see that you are the type of person who exudes creativity in so many aspects of life. Tell me a little about what creativity means in your life, even above and beyond writing
R
So that’s a really strong force in my life. I think it shows in my choice to marry an artist and someone who would help me in my quest to make creativity a big part of family life.
K
Did you realize when you met your husband how important his creativity would be for your relationship?
R
Oh yes, I knew that he had ideas in his head and he wanted to let them blossom and he wanted to let my mind blossom, and this was just kind of a mutual decision. If he’d been somebody too pragmatic it wouldn’t work. I needed an adventurous mind, someone who would dream with me, but I also consider us really practical people. It’s just that we give creativity a place in our life. Not full reign, and we don’t reign it in too much, but we give it the correct channel I think.
The way we do that is we have a mutual passion for art. We spent last Thursday taking our girls to the art museum and then to Shakespeare in the park. It’s just exposing them. They don’t even understand everything that Shakespeare does, but they laughed and they got scared and they understood enough, and they’re getting enough exposure that it won’t scare them later when they try to dive in.
Art is kind of our measure of how much we like a city. Whenever we visit somewhere new it’s like, ‘do we like this city?’ ‘I don’t know, let’s go to the art museum and find out.’ I’m like a creativity vampire, I just suck it in and love to consume it.
And the other one is nature. We surround ourselves and participate in nature. We spend time outside, hiking and taking camping trips. We just want our girls to see what it looks like when water goes down a stream and when a leaf floats in the water. We just want these images burned in their minds, and I need them in mine. Even if I’ve seen it a hundred times, I’ve never seen it quite like that before and these images become really important to me in my life. So observation is one way that I practice creativity. It’s just to look.
K
And you were like this as a child?
R
Yes, I spent a lot of time alone outside, just looking. I would sit—like I’d pick a plant out in the middle of the field and I would say, ‘This is my favorite one.’ And it would look like all the others but I would think, ‘I’m paying attention to this one. ‘ And the image is still burned in my mind. I mean I picked this weed and decided it was the most beautiful weed, and I still see the stripes of white and gold and I would visit it almost daily, just checking on my weed. I just felt like there was so much beauty that doesn’t even get seen. I thought, ‘why did God put this beautiful thing in a field and no one is around to see it? And the whole earth is covered with this beauty whether we are there to see it or not.’ So I make it a point to try to go look for it and make it be seen.
K
Where does your family go hiking around Kansas?
R
We do Ernie Miller nature center. We also go to lakes and take country rides and just find gravel roads that we don’t know. I don’t like doing drives so much as driving to somewhere and getting out because I don’t like the barrier of the window between me and the world. I want to go somewhere and touch it. We spend half of our time walking in the art museum and the other half walking the grounds around the art museum so we can see God’s art and people’s art, and they both go so well together. We’re just about to take a trip camping and rafting in the Ozarks.
K
Well you need to keep us posted on your journey. Moving on, you describe yourself as a reader first and a writer second. Explain…
R
Well I’ve written in my entire life one book that’s on a shelf, but I’ve read I don’t even know how many thousands. So therefore I feel much more qualified as a reader than as a writer. I have given the world far fewer words than I have consumed. And I’m a reader first because when I write it’s always with a reader in mind. And really the reader in mind is myself. How would I want this moment described. Because in my mind the story is solid. I will not change the story for the reader, but the question is how would I want this story represented to them? Because I’m not going to say, for the reader’s sake this person should not die. If that person dies they die. I’m a history major, so for me it happened how it happened, but now how will I tell the people how it happened? So when a story is in my head, it has happened to me. It’s a historical fact in my brain.
K
So do you not feel like you sit there at moments and try to make a decision about what happens next in your writing? You feel like it just comes to you?
R
I know this sounds really schizophrenic, but there are times when I don’t know what happens next but I never feel like I decide. I feel like I sit down and I watch the movie play out in my mind. I go to my character and I say, “Megan what happened?” And I sit and I hear her story. Whatever little part of me is controlling that character is somehow separate from the other parts of me, and it just tells me what happened and then I accept the story and go from there.
K
100% of the time?
R
I can’t think of a divergence.
K
Shotgun questions. Are you ready? Tell me the first thing that comes to mind:
K: Favorite book R: I Capture the Castle
K: Favorite Author: R: David McCullough
K: Book that first stole your heart R: Wait till Helen Comes
K: Book that made you want to be a writer R:I Capture the Castle. It’s the best piece of writing I’ve ever read. It’s the book I go back to and say, ‘Oh not there yet.’ I don’t know if I’ll ever be there, but it’s the book I measure by.
K: Favorite book to read to your girls R: Wrinkle in Time
K: Book that everyone must read once R: Moby Dick
K: Book that made you cry R: All Quiet on the Western Front
K
Do you have any strange writing quirks?
R
I don’t know if this is strange. I think lots of people are this way, but writing exhausts me. I am physically exhausted after one hour of writing, and hungry and just physically done. So I rarely ever write for more than an hour. That’s my limit.
K
It’s like you are channeling your characters and it wipes you out.
R
Yes, it’s like being a movie director and you’re just running around and wondering ‘Which point of view? How do I capture this story?’ And trying to figure out the best way to capture it and pass it on to someone else. It’s just mentally exhausting.
K
Where do you get the courage to pursue writing, especially where you raise up these incredible writers and masterpieces. How do you find the courage to even try?
R
Maybe its anti-courage. My biggest courage comes from humility. I have to think, ‘Nobody is looking at me. Nobody is waiting for what I say, and most people wont even notice.’ So in that spirit of anonymity, I can just move forward and say I can do this. Like you don’t want to walk outside naked, but if you were invisible it wouldn’t be that big of a deal. So in the world of writing there’s just a lot of anonymity because there are millions of stories that will never be published. So I feel slightly invisible and that gives me the courage to put it out there exactly the way I need to put it out there and just tell myself, ‘no one is going to read it anyway.’
K
Do you get a thrill when you find out people read your book?
R
I get a thrill in mass. So like if I go to Amazon and see a thousand people read my book I think that’s thrilling. If one person comes up to me and says I’m reading your book, that is not thrilling to me, that is scary. I usually say ‘thank you that is so nice,’ and then quickly divert to a question about them because I don’t want to discuss the book or their experience reading it.
K
So you don’t want to know what people think about your books?
R
No I don’t, not even with compliments. But I would be sad it no one read it. I guess I want people to read it and not tell me about it. I like it best when I have some distance. People will talk to me about On Little Wings and I can get comfortable about it as long as we talk about the characters and not about me or my writing.
K
What advice do you have for fellow writers?
R
Don’t be afraid to writer. Fear comes from failure so quickly decide what failure is and stick to it. Because success is a moving target. And you’re going to be tempted to move your target and say I will succeed if I get an agent. And then you will move your target and say I will succeed if my agent sells it. And then you will move your target and say I will succeed if my publisher gives this some good advertising and gets it into Barnes and Noble. And if that happens you will move your target again. And what happens is you move your target every time and then eventually there will be a target you don’t hit unless you’re a miracle worker and there are about ten of them in the writing word. And then you will say, ‘I failed.’ And you will ignore the fact that before that there were ten targets that you bullseyed—you bullseyed them, you accomplished it. But because you kept moving your target, you think you failed. And it’s not fair and it makes me angry that we do that to ourselves. So quickly decide what success is. And that doesn’t mean you stop there. Don’t be afraid to move on once you hit your goal, but hold onto the success you already found and say, ‘Next I will try this.’ But know that you already succeeded. And if you don’t get that next target you don’t have to worry.
K
What are your thoughts on self-publishing?
R
I think its great. But as we are seeing more people self publishing than not, you are in the same place as you were before in trying to get on the shelf. The competition is stiff and getting stiffer. But if you want to use self-publishing as a vehicle to make your book available, then it’s a great way to do that. It’s not a great way to put your thumb in your mouth and stick it to the man in the publishing world, but it’s a great way to produce a book and have it available. The only reason I hesitate ever about self publishing is because of the climate of publishing world, it’s really hard to get into schools and get with the kids unless you are traditionally published. And that is what I’m after. I write for young adults and I want to be with my readers. Other than that, self-publishing for me was more lucrative, more empowering, and I loved it.
K
What are you reading these days?
R
History. I love going to used book stores and browsing the history section and just scanning the titles. I’ve been onto medical history for the last two years but I take little branches off and I peruse used bookstores to see what I can find. I test books out by opening to a random page and reading a few paragraphs to make sure the book isn’t dry, because there is nothing as bad as dry history. But as long as the storytelling is good, then I can read about anything.
Catch up with Regina Sirois on her blog: tapperandcompany.blogspot.com