Fantasy author Steph Swainston tells David Barnett why she isgiving up her day job
The critically acclaimed novelist Steph Swainston has a dream: tobe a chemistry teacher. Yes, you read that correctly. While thereare doubtless many teachers spending their summers writing novels,with an eye on escaping the lesson plans and daily commute,Swainston has been there, done that, and had enough. And now she'sthrowing in the towel to retrain as an A-level chemistry teacher.
It's a move that will surprise her fans. And she has a lot ofthose, having had four novels published in a genre - fantasy - thattypically generates a vocal and faithful audience. But it's also amove that has surprised her publishers, Gollancz. Swainston decidedpartway through a two-book deal that she didn't want to carry on,and has instructed her agent to negotiate her way out of thecontract. The advice to those dreaming of packing in the nine-to-five to write books, it seems, is be careful what you wish for.
"There's just too much stress on authors," says the 37-year-oldSwainston. She lives near Reading now, but grew up in West Yorkshireand she hasn't lost her gentle accent. "The business model seems tobe that publishers want a book a year. I wanted to spend time on mynovels, but that isn't economically viable."
Perhaps the gestation period of Swainston's first novel in herCastle cycle, The Year of Our War, spoiled her. It was published in2004 but she had been concocting stories about its imaginary world,the Fourlands, since childhood.
Filtered through the years of adulthood, Swainston's storiesresonated with a market that was eager to embrace somethingdifferent in the genre. The buzz at the time was about "the newweird", exemplified by China Miville's novels and utilising therecognisable building blocks of fantasy, such as cod-mediaevalsettings and non-human races, but with the sensibilities ofcontemporary fiction, an experimentalism in form and style, perhapseven a certain radicalism.
So while the Fourlands, on the face of it, might look a wee bitlike Middle Earth, and Swainston's winged hero Jant can fly, he alsohas a nasty little drug habit, wears T-shirts, and reads sportsreports in the newspaper.
The Year of Our War and its sequels in the Castle series, NoPresent Like Time and The Modern World, earned sparkling reviews andthe thumbs-up from celebrity fans ranging from the aforementionedMiville to Duran Duran's Simon Le Bon.
But - cautionary tale alert! - the writer's life isn't what itcould be. For starters, packing in the day job can be a mistake.Swainston says: "Writers have to have something as well as writing,something which feeds back into their work and makes it meaningful."She references the 19th-century Scottish writer and reformer SamuelSmiles. "He said that if you are going to be an artist, you shouldhave a job as well, so that you're not relying on your art to payyour bills. If we don't have external influences ..." she pauses,"well, look at Stephen King. All his characters seem to be writers."
Then there's the lack of human interaction: "I suffer terriblyfrom isolation while writing. I really need a job where I can bearound people and learn to speak again. It's much, much healthier tobe around people. Human beings are social animals."
And then there are the fans. I first met Swainston at the WorldScience Fiction Convention in Glasgow in 2005, when her star wasascendant. She was on a panel discussing the influence of drugs onthe genre. (She was speaking from some experience, having onceworked for a pharmaceutical company developing medicines fromcannabis.) Afterwards, when I spoke to her, she seemed harassed,impatient. She felt that no one was really listening or engaging;that the fans simply wanted to outdo one other with namechecks ofbooks and authors.
"I don't have a problem with fandom," she says. "But I don'tthink fans realise the pressure they put on authors. The very vocalones can change an author's next book, even an author's career, bywhat they say on the internet. And writers are expected to engageand respond." She pauses. "The internet is poison to authors."
Swainston is also unhappy with the "book a year" ethos of modernpublishing: "Publishers seem to want to compete with faster forms ofmedia, but the fast turnover leads to poorer books, and publishersshoot themselves in the foot. And it's as if authors have to becelebrities these days. It's expected that authors do loads of self-publicity - Facebook, Twitter, blogs, forum discussions - but it'san author's job to write a book, not do the marketing. Just likecelebrities don't make good authors, authors don't really make goodcelebrities."
All of which, in a roundabout way, is why she's decided to stop.It isn't as if her career's on the wane; the fourth Castle book,Above the Snowline, was published to acclaim, the Finnish edition ofThe Year of Our War was recently shortlisted for the ThtifantasiaAward for best translated fantasy book, and Swainston is to be aguest of honour at the 2012 Eastercon SF/Fantasy convention, acommitment she's honouring despite withdrawing from the genre.
She says: "I have to get back to real life again. It wasn't aneasy decision, because it took a lot to get to the stage of being apublished author. But during my teacher training so far, I've dealtwith so much - flooded schools, fire alarms going off, childrenbeing sick ..." And, after living in her own fantasy worlds for solong, it's this seeming mundanity that Swainston craves. That and"doing something meaningful with my life". But won't she miss thewriting? "Chemistry feeds that sense of wonder that made me want tobe a writer in the first place," she says. "Besides, I've never saidI won't write again, just that if I do write another book, I'll doit on my terms."
From The Modern World (2007)
By Steph Swainston
Gollancz, 7.99
"... From birds I learnt the trick is not to flap all the timebut glide as much as possible to save effort. It's a game of witsfor me, though. When I was on drugs, I took the overfamiliarcountryside for granted; flying around in a daze, delivering lettersor failing to. No longer - I was seeing it with new eyes, full ofgladness that I'm clean at last."
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