Interview: Cecil Castellucci

Cecil Castellucci is the kind of writer I would like to be. The kind of writer who isn’t afraid to loosen up the reigns and let the story take her where it needs to go.

I’d like her to teach a class on that.

Already an established young adult novelist, Castellucci wrote her first graphic novel, The P.L.A.I.N. Janes, for Minx this year. Here, she talks about writing The P.L.A.I.N. Janes, writing for young adults and where she wants to take her career as a storyteller.

PRG: You’re kind of a Renaissance woman, aren’t you? You write novels, you’re a musician and a filmmaker, and now you’re into graphic novels. Do you ever sleep?

Cecil Castellucci: I do sleep! I like projects and I like telling stories and telling them in all different kinds of ways. Often, the story will present itself and the way it wants to be told, whether it wants to be a poem or a short film or something else. When I was in my early twenties, there was the Riot Grrrl movement and we didn’t know how to play our instruments, but we formed rock groups anyway and went on tour and made records and stuff. So, I’ve always had this sense of like “Oh, you don’t know how to do that? It doesn’t matter! Just do it! Try!” The Renaissance part comes from deciding that just because I may not be very good at something, that doesn’t mean that I can’t do it, too.

PRG: Did set out to write young adult fiction, or did your stories just happen to fit an adolescent audience?

CC: I have always wanted to write young adult fiction. When I wanted to be a writer and set out to write novels, it was absolutely YA fiction I was interested in writing. When I was 10, 11, 12, that was when I fell in love with reading and storytelling and when I started writing, those were the kinds of books I was feeling nostalgic about.

There’s something about writing characters who are in a profound transformation and when you’re a young adult that’s exactly what’s happening. Everything is for the first time, everything is a new experience, your feelings are running very high and it’s when you throw down and decide what kind of adult you’re going to be, what kind of human being you’re going to be. I find that as a writer and someone who wants to have really interesting characters, that’s a really compelling time of life.

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PRG: Do you have any particular favorites from that time period, when you started to love reading?

CC: There really wasn’t YA literature when I was a young adult, like ages 14 and 15 – it was more when I was 10, 11, 12. I liked The Witch of Blackbird Pond by Elizabeth George Speare. I loved The Secret Garden and The Little Princess. A lot of science fiction, like The Tripods Trilogy by John Christopher [The White Mountains, The City of Gold and Lead, and The Pool of Fire]. A lot of Ray Bradbury. I think Bradbury is one of the best YA writers that there is.

These are all middle grade novels, but whatever! When I was 15, I was reading Kafka and Thomas More’s Utopia and Machiavelli because there wasn’t really YA. There was Judy Blume with Deenie and Forever and stuff, but YA, although it was around, it wasn’t as specific a genre. There was middle grade, sort of pre-teen writing, and then there were adult books. Right now we’re in the midst of a golden age for YA literature.

PRG: What are some of your current favorites in science fiction and fantasy?

CC: I don’t have cable television at home, so I have to rent everything. Right now I’m loving the new Dr. Who. I just watched Buffy and Angel for the first time and loved it. And Firefly, which I thought was amazing. Right now I’m reading The Uglies Trilogy by Scott Westerfeld, and I’m enjoying that a lot. It’s bringing back memories of The Tripods Trilogy. As far as fantasy, I’ve been reading a lot of urban fantasy. A lot of my friends who are also YA authors are also urban fantasy people, so Ironside by Holly Black and City of Bones by Cassandra Claire. Then I just read Book of A Thousand Days by Shannon Hale and The Princess and the Hound by Mette Ivie Harrison. These are all YA books because that’s pretty much what I read!

PRG: Since you are writing about such a turbulent time in anyone’s life, do you get contact from young readers – by email or at conventions – who just say “Thank you, somebody finally gets it.” Because a lot of young adults feel like no one really gets it.

CC: Yeah, I do. I actually Googled myself once – it’s shocking, I know! – and found a girl who had blogged about my book Boy Proof. She said that her mother never understood her, but had just bought her Boy Proof and it was the first time her mother had bought her something she actually liked. And they were finally able to talk. It was an opening for them to start having real conversations. The girl didn’t write me specifically, but its just amazing to think that my books can open up conversations between mothers and daughters.

I’ve gotten a lot of emails from readers who identify with my character from Boy Proof, Egg, because she’s obsessed with comic books and science fiction and fantasy and there aren’t many female characters like that out there. The same thing with Beige. A lot of people who feel alienated by the music they like because it’s not the same as what their peers like and they feel like they don’t have a voice. They feel really connected to Beige.

PRG: How has the reception for The P.L.A.I.N. Janes been as compared to your other YA books?

CC: It’s totally different. Teachers and librarians have been starving for good graphic novels for teens, especially for girls, so the response there has been overwhelming and positive. It’s clean and its nice and it’s a good story and intelligent and it’s an alternative to manga. Not that manga is dirty, but they want to be fluent in the graphic form and librarians have been struggling to find something that they can put into the girls’ hands. The Minx line is great for that. A lot of the stuff from First Second and Oni are really great for teen girls as well. With all of that going on at the same time, it’s kind of a golden age for teen graphic novels.

Another difference is with all the attention on Minx and The P.L.A.I.N. Janes – I’ve never had that for any of my books. The response has been really great. I think a lot of people were really nervous, including me because this was my first graphic novel. I get emails from, not only teen girls who like it, but also men in their 30s and 40s who thought it was gonna suck, wound up liking it and now they have something they can share with their wife or girlfriend. That’s something I’ve heard that a lot; guys saying, “This is the only graphic novel my wife or girlfriend has read!” Also women in their 20s and up to 40 who have never read a graphic novel, but have read The P.L.A.I.N. Janes, maybe because someone gave it to them or because they read about it somewhere or because they know my YA books. And now they want to go read more graphic novels.

PRG: I understand that writing a graphic novel will be dramatically different from writing a prose novel. But, you also have a background as a filmmaker. Did that experience with visual storytelling help you in making that cross over from prose to graphic storytelling?

CC: I think the difference is, when you’re thinking about a film and you’re storyboarding or figuring out a shot list, you know there’s going to be movement in the frame. Whereas in a graphic novel, there’s no movement! So, it’s not quite the same as storyboarding, but it did help me because the visual nature was in my head – it wasn’t a foreign way to think. But, there’s no movement in the panels, so I did at first feel very claustrophobic in those panels because it was very difficult for me to pick and choose how to move the story forward.

I really thank Jim Rugg for that, because he was like, “Just write any crazy old thing and we’ll work it out from there!” When he sent me back the first seven pages drawn from my words, something clicked and I felt like I got it. We had long discussions about it and he would make suggestions like, “You did this in five panels, I think we can do it in three.” I’ve learned so much from his guidance.

PRG: Sounds like you had a pretty positive experience working with Jim Rugg.

CC: I love Jim Rugg! I love him! He’s amazing. One of the great things about going from writing prose to writing a comic book is you have to really be economical with your words, and when I was writing the script, I thought I wasn’t writing too many words. Then when I saw his pictures, they were so powerful that it made me feel strong enough to go back in a rip out like half the words I put in there. I think that’s an amazing thing. It was like we were jamming in a way.

PRG: How much planning do you put into your stories? Some writers will plan characters right down to their key chains, whether it appears in the story or not, and others have a more organic approach where they let the story happen on it’s own. How do you approach it?

CC: I’m a plunger, not a planner! I approach it in a really organic way. I have no idea what’s on their key chain, but I might find out if I look at the key chain when they put it in the ignition of their car. Usually with a novel, I know how it starts and I know how it ends. I have the first and last sentence written before I start writing the book and I use that ending and beginning as my North star to guide me. Sometimes there’s a mountain in the way and you have to go around it or over it or blow a tunnel through it. I don’t know how I’m going to get to that place at the beginning.

So far, all of my novels have ended pretty much one step to the right of where I had intended. With The P.L.A.I.N. Janes and Janes in Love, which is the sequel, I knew what was going to happen, but I had a bigger picture of what was going to happen. I knew it was going to end on New Year’s Eve, but I knew the story was going to continue too. I had, and still have, lots of ideas on where it could go. Even though I’ve finished Janes in Love, I’m like, “Maybe we could do a book 3! I still have things to say!” That’s really exciting because I’ve never done that before, where I can see these characters continuing.

PRG: Where do you go from here in your career?

CC: I want to write lots more books and comics. I just want to tell stories in every possible way. I want to do an interpretive dance story. I want to paint a story, even though it would be the worst painting ever. I just want to keep stretching and exploring and growing and scaring myself and digging deeper and all that stuff. I’m really chomping at the bit to do a monthly comic book because I think that would be really terrifying and wonderful because the format is so different than anything I’ve ever done. I’d like to write an adult novel. A science fiction novel. Make another movie. Everything! I want to do everything!

For more on Cecil Castellucci, please visit her website.

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