Meet the Author: Mary Robinette Kowal

Hello, readers! Today’s treat is the final author interview of the year, with the fascinating and talented Mary Robinette Kowal. Ms. Kowal is the author of The Spare Man, The Glamourist Histories series, Ghost Talkers, and the Lady Astronaut Universe. She is part of the award-winning podcast Writing Excuses and has received the Astounding Award for Best New Writer, four Hugo awards, the Nebula and Locus awards. Her stories appear in Asimov’s, Uncanny, and several Year’s Best anthologies. Mary Robinette, a professional puppeteer, also performs as a voice actor (SAG/AFTRA), recording fiction for authors including Seanan McGuire, Cory Doctorow, and John Scalzi. She lives in Nashville with her husband Rob and over a dozen manual typewriters. Ms. Kowal’s books are creative and engaging, with fascinating premises and grounded characters. I love how she takes true things, and real history and tweaks it, adding a little magic or twist or element of “what if.”

And now, meet, Mary Robinette Kowal:

What is your favorite part and least favorite part of the writing process?

I enjoy being given license to daydream. I enjoy building worlds and problem solving. I enjoy pushing emotions around with the words on a page. I love it all. Except the sitting-down-in-the-chair part. 

I also bog down it every time at the 2/3 or 3/4 mark. I even know why – it's time for me to switch from opening questions to closing them. When it's really bad, I go back and reread up to that point and that usually gives me momentum to finish.

Tell us about someone who has inspired you creatively?

Ursula K. Le Guin. I remember sitting in her living room and hearing her explain what she got wrong about Wizard of Earthsea. The fact that this icon– this book that had shaped me — that she could still examine her work and see errors was astonishing. (Example: With one exception, none of the female characters have names. And most of their dialogue is reported rather than direct.) Seeing her be unafraid of the mistakes, or embarrassed by them was empowering. Realizing that she saw those problems as a way to better understand herself and an opportunity to improve even decades after the book’s publication, continues to shape me.

I love that she continued to interrogate fiction and society. That she was unafraid to admit error. That she didn’t see it as a weakness but as a way to grow. I love her power.

Which idea comes first for a new project: a character, a story, or a world?

It varies, constantly. One of my favorite pieces of advice to newer writers is that “you are a reader who has honed your taste over your entire life. Your taste is valid – what you like is a useful metric.” Honestly, I’m just writing what I want to read. 

My short stories are all over the place while my novels have tended to be historically driven, usually around an era that I already have an interest in. Being an author is basically a license to make my natural curiosity socially acceptable. 

One thing I particularly enjoy about using an historical frame is that it allows me to talk about contemporary issues in a way that is more accessible to readers. I deal with gender and race in the Regency. I dealt with them in World War I with Ghost Talkers. And those same issues are still present in the 1950s with the Lady Astronaut books. It would be nice if we weren’t so consistent about systemic biases.

Also to be frank, a lot of it is about the clothes. Look… I love a good cos-play, so why set something in an era where I don’t like the clothes? And if I need to hand sew a Regency ball gown or try on an actual space suit, that’s just research, right?

What kind of books do you gravitate toward in your own reading life?

I read all of the things. You can check out my Goodreads page here for what I’ve been reading recently. But it is often SFF.

There’s no point in my life when I don't remember reading science fiction. My dad and I would listen to Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy when it was on the radio. We’d watch Star Trek, Battlestar Galactica. I love the ways science fiction and fantasy allows us to ask big questions.

When I go outside of science fiction and fantasy, I tend to go to mystery.

Where is someplace you feel most at home?

My parents live on land that has been in our family for 120 years. It was my grandmother Robinette’s home, and I spent summers there wading in the creek and playing in the magnolia grove. My great grandfather built the house, and there continue to be…interesting pieces that need repair or reworked. 

What is your superpower? - Untangling anything, which began with learning to do it on the strings of marionette puppets. It comes in handy for untangling plots and social situations too. My other superpower is figuring out how to feature something I can’t fix. The paper puppet I’m building needs tape to hold it together? I’ll use one with an interesting pattern, and make it look like scales. 

What is one of the best pieces of advice you’ve ever gotten?

This is going to sound flippant but it’s really my favorite advice: Every writer is different and advice isn’t one size fits all. Take what’s useful to you, and leave what isn’t. That said, here are two pieces I come back to again and again.

You can fix it in post. Recognizing that I can iterate a problem part of a story until I get it the way I want it is deeply freeing.

Talent is the ability to recognize a mistake AND to correct it.

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I hope you’ve enjoyed this year’s interview series, because personally, I love the excuse to talk to other writers. The series will be on hold for a couple of months (holidays, school break, etc.), but the regular monthly newsletter with reviews and news will be in your inbox as usual! 

Have a great week everyone!