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Author Interview: R.J. Palacio Flipbook PDF
Author Interview: R.J. Palacio
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Author Interview
R. J. Palacio
R. J. Palacio
1. What made you decide to leave the world of Wonder? I really did write Wonder as a stand-alone story. So, while I added a few chapters to that story with Auggie & Me and White Bird, I don’t think it’s wise for me to turn it into something it wasn’t meant to be. I’d rather leave it as its own self-contained world, which I may go back to someday, and concentrate on making new worlds. 2. Where did the idea for Pony come from? The spark of the story came from a dream my son had years ago, when he was twelve or so. It involved a boy in the old West whose face was half-covered in blood. (It was a scary dream!) That vivid imagery stuck with me, and a story started taking root in my mind about the boy with the half-red face. What happened to him? Who was he? How was he doing? I began to create a world in which that boy could exist. It’s unbelievable, in hindsight, that one image could spark an entire novel, but that’s really how it came about. Once the story started forming in my head, I knew it was going to be a quest story in the most traditional sense. The boy embarks on a journey, has a series of revelations, and is never the same. In so many classic hero journeys, the protagonist has both a faithful companion and some kind of wondrous animal to accompany him—in this case, the companion is a ghost, and the animal is Pony. 3. How different—if at all—was the writing process for Pony versus Wonder? They were both very different and very similar at the same time. Very different in that I had a demanding 9-to-5 job when I was writing Wonder. My kids were younger. I was a working mom, with all that entails, and I seldom had time to think, much less write. So, in order to actually write Wonder, I had to carve time out for myself every night
between midnight and 3 a.m. I did that for a year and a half. I know it sounds crazy, but it actually worked for me! And I got used to the rhythm of that schedule, and writing when the world was asleep. With Pony, I’m now a full-time writer, so my 9-to-5 job is writing. My kids are older now. One doesn’t even live at home anymore. I have a lot more time on my hands and don’t have to struggle to find “quiet” time. So the circumstances around writing both books were quite different. Where they were very similar experiences, though, was in how, only a few pages into it, the characters became so real to me that they started dictating where the novel would go. In a way, with both books, there were times when I would surprise myself as I was writing, thinking the plot would go one way, and suddenly, out of nowhere, something else happens, and whatever outline I had in my head flies out the window. That’s a very joyful experience and hard to explain unless you’ve been through it. It’s the true delight of writing. 4. What was the research like? I’ve been collecting antique objects for decades—books, cameras, daguerreotypes. The daguerreotypes in my collection influenced the characters in the book, which is why I ended up using them as the chapter openers. So, in some ways, I’d been doing research on some of the topics long before I started writing the book. But once I started actually writing the story and committed to the time and place in which its set, I immersed myself—for years—in that time period, reading spaghetti Westerns, diaries, firsthand accounts, and literary novels from that era, even taking a class in wet-plate collodion photography so I could better understand early photographic processes. Literally, for several years, that’s all I read. If there’s a version of method acting for writers, that’s what I was doing. By the time I finally started writing the book, though, it was almost too much information. Four hundred pages and two years into that version of the
story, I knew it wasn’t the book I wanted to write. So I threw that manuscript away and moved on to other projects. Basically, I had to let several years go by in which the research settled into the recesses of my mind. Before, I had so many notes, so much information. I knew how many miles and hours an Arabian horse could ride in a day. I knew their provenance, the name of the Bedouin tribe Pony had come from. I knew the kind of repeating rifle Chalfont and Beautyman carried. I knew the different photographic processes, what kind of lanterns were used, the names of real counterfeiters, the types of horse carts that were driven. I had topographic maps of the woods and the ravines and, well, so much! 5. Why did you want to write an historical novel? I’m not sure. I’ve always loved historical novels—those James Michener epics were a staple of my reading when I was growing up. In fact, my first draft of Pony was well on its way to being that kind of doorstopper, in terms of page count. But I didn’t really want to write that. I wanted to write what I like to call a “quick epic.” I wanted to write a story that could be read in a few sittings, but have its foundations built inside an epic story that is hinted at between the structure of the lines. Basically, it’s like writing historical fiction but without using all the history. Those facts are there, used when needed, but not described or explained. This isn’t a history lesson—it’s a read. I wanted to keep it simple.
R. J. Palacio
6. Were there any classic books you drew inspiration from for the adventure story? Or any nonfiction books? The Call of the Wild. The Black Stallion. The Road. Coal Black Horse. Eva Moves the Furniture. These were the books I had near me while writing. I was thrilled when Gayle Forman, who blurbed the book, made a comp to Jack London! She so got my frame of reference! As for nonfiction: I had piles of books that I constantly referred to, including books about counterfeiting in the 1800s, Western outlaws, the history of Arabian horses, early photographic processes, spiritualism, farmers’ almanacs from the 1850s, plus a thesaurus and several scientific journals from then, too. 7. Do you believe in ghosts? I believe that there’s more that can’t be seen than can be seen. The rest is a mystery. I’ve never seen a ghost, but I’ve experienced a sense of connection with loved ones who are no longer here, and whether that’s all internal or external, whether there’s a science to it or it’s just wishful thinking, I can’t tell you. I don’t know. And that’s part of the mystery of life, which is what this book is about. Silas learns to embrace the mysteries. 8. In relation to Wonder, you’ve been quoted as saying that the whole book could be summed up, thematically, as a meditation on kindness. Do you have a similar summation for Pony? I would say that Pony is about the connections that bind us. Those connections might not be seen, but they’re there, like invisible threads, connecting us to each other, the living to the dead, the past to the future. We live in a world we barely understand, full of uncertainties and vast distances separating us. What keeps us together, as human beings? What connects us? Love.
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