It’s time for a new interview series… like NOW. No really, actually it’s called NOW (Newly Omniscient Authors). To honor the relaunch of the site, I thought I’ve invited established authors to share how publishing - and their attitudes toward it- have changed since their careers first took off.
Today’s guest for the NOW is Olga Grushin, who was born in Moscow and moved to the US at eighteen. She is the author of four novels. Her debut, The Dream Life of Sukhanov,, won the New York Public Library Young Lions Fiction Award and earned her a place on Granta’s once-a-decade Best Young American Novelists list. Her latest, The Charmed Wife,(Putnam, January 2021), is a subversive retelling of Cinderella, a genre-bending mix of fantasy and realism that explores familiar fairy tales, romantic expectations, and storytelling conventions.
Has how you think (and talk) about writing and publishing changed, further into your career?
I had worked as an editor, albeit for an academic press, before I sold my first novel, so I was already familiar with the technical side of things, the stages of copyediting, proofreading, design, and so on. Of course, academic publishing is not the profit-making business that New York publishing is. Over the years, I have come to accept certain realities. Writers write, yes, but in addition – and this was not something I knew to expect in the beginning – they must also spend a fair amount of time promoting their work. Still, four novels in, nothing has changed in my thinking about writing itself. The practical side may be more challenging now that I am no longer a young writer in charge of my own time but a single mother of two. Yet when I manage to sit down at my desk and play with sentences for a few hours, it still feels like a calling, and it still – at the risk of sounding pompous here – gives meaning to my life.
Let’s about the balance between the creative versus the business side of the industry. Do you think of yourself as an artiste or are you analyzing every aspect of your story for marketability? Has that changed from your early perspective?
My publisher may not like my saying this, but I rarely, if ever, think about the business side when I write, perhaps even less so now than in the early years of my career. Worldly success – sales, awards, admiration, all that glittering tinsel – is a bit of a lottery. If it happens, due to some momentary alignment of stars, some nebulous combination of zeitgeist, luck, teamwork, and merit, that’s nice, but I find thinking about it (agonizing, planning, comparing, striving, what have you) an unwelcome distraction from what really matters to me: writing the best books I know how to write, one word at a time. My stories are not for everyone – they are often set on the borders of reality and dream, filled with failed artists, Soviet bureaucrats, loquacious gods, chain-smoking ghosts, and, of late, murderous princesses and talking mice – but they are completely, uncompromisingly mine. And if they sell less well than I’d hope, I can always supplement my income by freelancing, teaching, or breeding chickens.
The bloom is off the rose… what’s faded for you, this far out from debut?
Honestly, nothing. Every time I feel the buzz of a new idea, it is a thrill. Every time another book comes out, it is just as surprising. Every time I read a critic’s review, it is just as nerve-wracking (but I’m trying to swear off reading them altogether these days). Every time I receive a letter from someone who tells me my work has changed his or her life in some small way, I am just as happy. And, in truth, I feel that I am only now getting started – I have so many ideas to explore, so many novels that demand to be written.
Likewise, is there anything you’ve grown to love (or at least accept) that you never thought you would?
Yes, actually – social media. When my editor first proposed that I join Twitter, I felt instantly opposed to it. I am first and foremost a novelist by nature, so brevity is not my strongest suit, and I am also a fairly private person, enough so that the idea of communicating in tiny snippets with anonymous (and, rumor had it, not always well-disposed) hordes filled me with deep unease. I ventured in, with much reluctance - yet now, a year or two later, I am glad to say that I have found a community of like-minded book lovers out there, and it has been a source of many wonderful discoveries: so many books I would have never found on my own, so many people I would have never come in touch with otherwise. I will remember that experience next time I have to step out of my comfort zone. (Cough – Zoom bookstore events – cough …)
And lastly, what did getting published mean for you and how was it changed (or not changed!) your life?
I announced that I wanted to be a writer when I was four years old, and I have written continuously ever since. Publishing my first novel – at the age of thirty-four and in a language different from the one I had set out to write in (I was born in Russia, raised in Moscow and Prague, and came to the US for college) – meant no less than my lifelong dream coming true. I still marvel, almost daily, at being able to earn my living while doing what I love most in the world.
Also, when I was just starting out, I had no writing community whatsoever: I had never taken any writing classes and I did not know any writers, I was just alone in a basement studio apartment, poring over “How to Break into Print” guides and typing carefully double-spaced stories on an automatic typewriter – the most extravagant purchase I had made in my cash-stripped mid-twenties. Getting published meant meeting fellow writers at conferences, meeting readers in bookstores, and, eventually, trading my little typewriter for a real computer – not to mention being able to spend my workdays barefoot and two steps away from the kitchen with its endless supply of tea, which is absolutely essential to my creative process.