Rainbow Rowell’s FANGIRL is an unorthodox, funny, intimate and original look at creativity, love and growing up. Her fourth novel, LANDLINE, is forthcoming.
For Cath, being a Simon Snow fan is her life — and she’s really good at it. She and her twin sister, Wren, ensconced themselves in the Simon Snow series when they were just kids; it’s what got them through their mother leaving. Reading. Rereading. Hanging out in Simon Snow forums, writing Simon Snow fan fiction, dressing up like the characters for every movie premiere.
Cath’s sister has mostly grown away from fandom, but Cath can’t let go. She doesn’t want to. Now that they’re going to college, Wren has told Cath she doesn’t want to be roommates. Cath is on her own, completely outside of her comfort zone. She’s got a surly roommate with a charming, always-around boyfriend, a fiction-writing professor who thinks fan fiction is the end of the civilized world, a handsome classmate who only wants to talk about words . . . And she can’t stop worrying about her dad, who’s loving and fragile and has never really been alone.
For Cath, the question is: Can she do this? Can she make it without Wren holding her hand? Is she ready to start living her own life? Writing her own stories? And does she even want to move on if it means leaving Simon Snow behind?
YOUNG ADULT: What three words come to mind when you think of writing?
Rainbow Rowell: Reading inside out.
YA: Tell us a little bit about your latest work. What is different about FANGIRL?
RR: FANGIRL is about a girl, Cath, who doesn’t want her world to change. She doesn’t want to start college. She doesn’t want to let go of her twin sister. She doesn’t want to fall in love. And she doesn’t want to stop writing fanfiction about her two favorite fictional characters, Simon and Baz.
But life IS change. FANGIRL is about Cath learning that she doesn’t have to let go of the things she loves to make room for more in her life.
Narratively it’s different for me because I incorporate Cath’s fanfiction into the novel — as well as excerpts from a fictional book series I created. So I got to write in three different voices.
YA: Is this book rooted in your own experiences at all? Are there any ‘meta’ qualities to this work?
RR: Yeah. There’s a lot in this book about writing and being a writer. About worrying that your ideas will never be good enough, that you don’t have new worlds inside of you to explore…
Also, Cath really craves creative partnership and collaboration, which is very true of me. Pretty much anything Cath says about writing — why she does it, why it scares her — comes directly from my brain.
And both Cath and I feel more comfortable online than in a roomful of people. I got the idea for the book when I started thinking about what my life as a writer and fan would have been like if I’d had access to the Internet as a teenager, like Cath does.
YA: Take us through a typical writing day for you.
RR: When I’m not editing or promoting a book, I try to write for four to six hours at a time. Usually I start by reworking whatever I wrote the day before. I try to write during the day — because it’s better for my family and sleep and life — but my natural inclination is to start writing at about six or seven, and write late into the night.
I’ve written all my books so far at coffee shops, but now that my kids are in school, I’m experimenting with writing from home.
YA: Besides the classic ‘never give up’, what advice would you give to aspiring young writers today?
RR: Read until your eyes hurt. You have to read good stuff to recognize it when it’s coming out of you.
YA: What’s next for you?
RR: My next book, Landline, comes out in July. It’s an adult book — which is to say it’s about adults, not that only people over 20 should read it. It’s about a woman who discovers a way to talk to her husband in the past. You can read more and see the cover here.
I’m working on another YA book as well. A fantasy. (We’ll see whether I can pull that off.)
YA: What other authors, YA or otherwise, do you idolize? Or, what YA books are on a pedestal for you?
RR: I try not to idolize people — but I read everything by Neil Gaiman, Marian Keyes, Jasper Fforde and Dave Duncan.