Kamy Wicoff is the bestselling author of the nonfiction book I Do but I Don’t: Why the Way We Marry Matters. But let's celebrate her debut novel now, Wishful Thinking, an exhilarating satire about modern motherhood, with a soupcon of fantasy throw in. She is the cofounder of one of the world’s largest communities for women writers, www.shewrites.com. She is also cofounder, with Brooke Warner, of She Writes Press. She Writes and She Writes Press are part of the SparkPoint Studio family. Thank you for being here, Kamy!
You've touched THE
nerve of working mothers--how can we possibly be there for our kids AND for our
bosses. Why is this so difficult and do you think it gets easier?
It is THE question isn’t it? I wrote the book because it’s
something I struggle with myself, and I often feel like I just don’t have enough
time to do everything I need to do. But is lack of time really the problem? My
main character, Jennifer, is suddenly given all the time she needs; she can be
at afterschool pickup and at an important work meeting; she can go on the
school field trip and show up for her job. The question was, would her life
then be great? What Jennifer (and I) discovered is that unless you address the
underlying “it’s never enough no matter what you do” mentality our culture constantly
enforces on us both as workers and as parents, no amount of time will provide
the balance you seek. Part of why it is so difficult is that workplaces are still
designed for men with stay-at-home wives, a la Don Draper, and the
standards mothers are held to, are, incredibly, higher
now than they were then! But I do believe it can, and will, get easier if
we do two critical things: 1) stop blaming ourselves for our personal failings
in a system that isn’t set up for us to succeed, and instead fight for
workplace reform (everyone should join MomsRising!);
and 2) take a long view when balancing being their for your kids and for your
work. Sometimes one has to take precedence over the other, but over time, if
you are mindful, it will all even out. I find that’s true for me, anyway.
I love the whole Time
Travel appeal of the novel, of using time to solve our problems the way your
heroine Jennifer THINKS that she can. Can you talk about what sparked this
ingenious idea for you?
I was reading the Harry Potter books with my son several
years ago and I thought, I wish there was a book like this for moms. And then I
thought, if I could give myself, or any working mom I know, one power, what
would it be? The answer came immediately: the ability to be in two places at
once. (As my sons would say, duh.) I
knew from the beginning, however, that I didn’t want to bestow this power on my
main character through magic. I have always been an amateur lover of physics,
following the construction of the Large Hadron Collider and the search for the
Higgs boson particle, etc., and I have also always felt that women in science
suffer some of the worst sexism around. (This fabulous
Science Friday podcast underscored that for me.) I loved the idea of
writing a strong female scientist into the book, and after consulting with some
real physicists, I determined that the time travel app, via wormhole, was the
most realistic way to go based on what physicists believe is possible. The
notion of harvesting
of wormholes in quantum foam, for example, is an idea from Stephen Hawking
himself.
What kind of writer
are you? Do you have rituals, do you have a Post-it addiction, the way I do, do
you map your stories out, or do you like to be surprised?
I have to say that for this project, I became a devoted user
of Scrivener,
which I had never used before. (It even includes a form of Post-it notes,
Caroline, where you can create virtual index cards!) I love to be thorough in
my research when I am creating a world: I knew, for example, the exact building
in the West Village Jennifer lived in, down to its GPS coordinates and address.
In Scrivener, I could collect links and facts in an organized way and draw on them
throughout the writing of the book, which was a life saver, because when you
are attempting to write something that involves time-travel, things get
complicated fast. As for mapping the story out—I started by just writing, about
fifty or sixty pages, to get a sense of the voice, the characters, and whether
I had a viable idea, and then I pulled back to outline. (I wrote
about this for She Writes and got lots of feedback and tips from other
writers, too.) I felt free to go off the outline when needed, but it was
tremendously helpful in giving me a sense of direction and a sense of
accomplishment each time a plot-milestone was reached.
There is so much witty
and sharp social commentary in Wishful Thinking that I found myself laughing
even as I underlined passages. Can you talk a bit about that?
Firstly, thank you! Christina Baker Kline, when she first
read the manuscript, also commented on how much she loved the social critique
contained in the book, and urged me to emphasize that as we marketed it, rather
than simply selling it as a “fun read.” (Though you were definitely meant to
laugh. I cracked myself up a few times while writing it.) I think it was an
enormous asset to write this book as a forty-something woman with some life
experience under her belt, and years of observations about this particular part
of life ripe and ready to go. Jennifer’s is a world I know well, and it’s an
amalgam of the work and life experiences of many, many women I know, and of the
confidences and conundrums we’ve shared.
You also are the
co-founder of the wonderful SheWrites Press. Tell us about that, please, and
has running a press influenced your writing in any way?
One huge thing it did for me – and that it can actually do
for any writer who is producing a book worthy of being published, whether or
not she has a big “platform” because
of the way our model works – was to free me from fretting during the
writing process that the book might not ever see the light of day. When it was
finished, I did have my agent take it out to traditional publishers to test the
marketplace (my first book, I
Do But I Don’t, was traditionally published), and I got an offer, but in
the end it wasn’t good enough to justify the terrible royalties traditional
presses give. (If you want to read more about that decision, you can check out
the post I wrote here.)
At this point, of course, I am incredibly nervous about having chosen to
publish as a true entrepreneur rather than taking an advance up front, but I believe
in this model as the future “third way” of publishing and am happy to be one of
its pioneers, along with my
other amazing SWP sisters.
What's obsessing you
now and why?
I am obsessing about my book and about whether anyone will
buy it, why do you think!? (Ha.) I am also obsessing about George
Saunders, this article
I read in the New Yorker about magic mushrooms helping cancer patients face
their fear of death, and this beautiful
four minute video by the artist Alexandra Posen, who is also a mom friend.
How did she do that?
What question didn't I
ask that I should have?
This was perfect. J
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