ISSN0708-594X Volume 33, Number 3 Fall 2011 Bill Slavin CANSCAIP News Canadian Society of Children’s Authors, Illustrators and Performers La Société canadienne des auteurs, illustrateurs et artistes pour enfants Introducing … Rachna Gilmore by Beverley Brenna It is a sunny spring evening and Rachna Gilmore and I are sitting companionably at the kitchen table of the Ottawa home she shares with husband Ian, gazing out at the array of garden beds artistically arranged across the backyard. Replete from a Rachna Gilmore salmon and asparagus dinner, and faced with the lived in Bombay until she was fourteen, when her happy task of interviewing one of Canada’s most family moved to London, England. After she prolific and well-loved children’s writers, I attempt graduated with an Honours Biology degree from to formulate questions about Rachna’s background King's College, Rachna decided on Canada as a and her writing process. suitable travel destination. Influenced by We explore beginning and roots. “I remember the Montgomery’s Anne books, Rachna went to Prince joy of being able to read when I was very little,” Edward Island where she married, completed a Rachna confides. “The rolling rush and swell of Bachelor of Education degree, and raised two words pouring out in a glorious flood, the daughters. exhilaration that those letters translated so “Reading children’s books to my kids was just the willingly from my tongue.” Born in India, Rachna impetus I needed to start writing...Also, with the 11 CANSCAIP News translations in French, Danish, German, Korean, Spanish, Urdu, Bengali and Chinese. “It was while walking on the beach, when I turned thirty,” she says, “that I finally realized that the reason I hadn’t started to write, despite wanting to for ages, was because I was afraid I wouldn’t succeed. It hit me then that I didn’t want to wake up one day at the age of eighty, still dreaming of writing and desperately wishing I’d started earlier. At that point my fear of not ever trying became greater than my fear of failure, so I took that leap of faith that all writing entails, and began to write in earnest. Well, maybe not earnest. Maybe I began to write in silliness. But seriously in silliness.” Since 1990, Rachna and her family have lived in Ottawa, where Rachna continues to "plark"—the term she's coined to describe her writing process— “play, work and lark. Calling the process of writing work seems too tedious and grinding, whereas play doesn't convey sufficiently the actual time and comedy-drama of everyday life, I had rich material energy and yes, work, that goes into it. But plark is right at hand.” Since then, Rachna has produced the right mixture, including as it does play and 22 published children’s books, with more on the work, and also larking about, along with the way. It is particularly fitting that in Sanskrit, the songbird, the lark.” name Rachna means creation or literature. While exploring many forms of writing during the Rachna’s interest in writing was sparked early by beginning stages of her career, Rachna published a her love of reading, and strongly influenced by the rich collection of adult short fiction—Of Customs character of Jo in Little Women, a book she had and Excise—under the pen name Rachna Mara. won as an academic prize while still living in This manuscript was inspired by an anecdote her Bombay. “Apparently I was diligent enough one mother shared about being a doctor in India, and as year in school to get an Honours prize,” says Rachna worked away on the voice for a character in Rachna. “When I first saw the title of the book I was an initial story, the other characters called out for given, I wasn’t impressed. I was a tomboy and the attention. “I wanted to capture their inner sense thought of being a ‘little woman’ was pretty sick- and tell their stories,” she says. “I’m always aware making to me. But I guess I must have run out of that nobody is peripheral in their own lives, reading material at some point because eventually I however they may seem to others.” did read that book. And I loved it, of course. This interest in subsidiary characters may be one of Perhaps I could relate to Jo because she wasn’t a the traits that supports Rachna’s careful character niminy-piminy little woman either.” While dreams development, assisting her in creating believable of being a writer grew, Rachna didn’t start to write cameos and secondary characters as well as seriously until the age of 30; her first book, My authentic main characters. “As a reader, I’ve always Mother is Weird, was accepted when she was 33, been interested in strong-willed characters,” she and published two years later in 1988. Since then confides, “such as Jo in Little Women, and Anne in she has published twelve other picture-books, two Anne of Green Gables. As well, having two early readers, and six children's novels, with daughters, and being very aware of gender politics 2 CANSCAIP News and inequalities, I wanted to portray strong female I ask Rachna about character development. characters who’d be positive role models for girls.” “Learning to develop character was a long slow spiral process,” she replies. “Some characters have Enter the Gita picture books in the mid nineties, sprung into my mind fully formed, such as Scully in with a young protagonist who balances—often with A Screaming Kind of Day and Tara in A Group of gusto— her Indian culture with her new Canadian One, but others needed several rounds of discovery landscape. Enter Scully in the 1999 Governor to reach the centre, the heart of the General’s Award winning picture book A Screaming character...Finding the voice of a character is Kind of Day—a convincing romp with a child whose crucial...If you get your character’s voice right, you hearing impairment is just a part of her identity, know your character; and if you know your not employed as a plot device or paraded as an character, you get the voice right.” Rachna speaks of issue. Enter the determined heroine of Rachna’s the importance of editors, and how “the best (2010) book Catching Time. Enter the captivating editors tell you where your writing doesn’t work, protagonist in Rachna’s realistic fiction novel The and then let you find the solutions.” She also Trouble with Dilly, reminiscent of earlier voices describes the importance of humour. “It’s really heard in A Group of One and Mina’s Spring of Colors difficult to pull off successfully and often it’s where themes of diversity mix with coming-of-age undervalued...but it lends tones of the bittersweet, and family dynamics. No insipid females, these! which represents life best.” When asked if her characters demonstrate any of “And advice for new writers?” I inquire. her own traits, Rachna responds: “I don’t consciously inject my traits in my characters but I “Read, read, read and write, write, write. And trust think in a way all of any author’s creations are a yourself. Make peace with the fact that the process reflection of them. To get inside the heart and head, of writing is long, slow and circuitous, with many the inner soul of your character, you have to have dead ends and wrong turns – a maze or some speck of resonance with the characteristics labyrinthine process – but that every stage of it is and traits of that character – including the villains. crucial to finding your way to the final draft.” The whole process offers a biting, and sometimes difficult to accept, insight that within each person resides the capacity for a whole range of actions, from the profoundly beautiful to the disturbingly ugly, even as such a range exists in humanity.” The Sower of Tales is Rachna’s first fantasy novel. Recommended for readers nine to fourteen, it was the winner of the National Chapter of Canada IODE Violet Downey Book Award in addition to being included on the Canadian Children’s Book Centre Our Choice list for 2006. “Developing Calantha for The Sower of Tales was a sharp learning curve. I first had a mousy character, but as the drafts progressed, I kept getting an image of another kind of Calantha – the words dusty and bumbling came to mind. At last I realized I was far more interested in the dusty, bumbling Calantha than the mousy one. I rewrote the novel and from then on I was able to move into successive drafts with greater conviction. That taught me to be flexible and willing to change, and reinforced how intimately character and plot are intertwined.” 3 CANSCAIP News been more vivid and compelling with more effort, time, patience and an eye for detail.” “Where do you find your material?” I probe. “Oh, material, it’s everywhere. I love listening to people’s stories...I love meeting people with quirks and snags and snarls, and trying to figure out what makes them tick. I don’t always find myself consciously gathering material, but in a way life is a constant harvesting of material, because it sinks into the unconscious and then, hopefully, burps up at the right time. Sometimes it’s a character who springs to mind, who intrigues me, sometimes it’s an image that flashes into my head, or a theme I’m curious to explore. On the beach one day I found names written in the sand, which struck me as ones I might be able to use for my incubating novels.