OK Tour Fans, I’m as pleased as peacock in a pigsty to bring you an interview with that talented teller of tales, that wonderful weaver of words, that amazing maker of myth, Mmmmmmiiiiiiizzzzzzzzzzzzzzz….. Ingrid Law. (Put your hands together everybody!)

Ingrid loves small-town quirkiness. That love comes through in Savvy, her debut novel, which won both a Newbery Honor Award and a Boston Globe-Horn Book Honor. It also spent three weeks on the New York Times Bestsellers List, was voted one of Publisher’s Weekly’s Best Books of the Year (2008), and was chosen by Booklist as one of the Top 10 First Novels for Youth (2008).

Ingrid, thanks for taking the time for this interview. I absolutely loved your prose in Savvy—you kind of pile up words, proving the adage, “less is more,” is not always true. More can be more when all the words add to the narrative and roll off the tongue in an interesting way (muddled and muzzy, and hollering hoo-ha, to pick two bits of fun from a random page). My question is: Where did you pick up this voice for Mibs? Have you ever known anyone who spoke the way she does?

Ingrid Law: Mibs’s voice is all her own. I had been reading a lot of tall tales at the time, so the tone definitely springs from that. But she uses a lot of alliteration and repeated words, or reduplicatives like “willy-nilly” and “shilly-shally.” I love words and love fitting them together into pleasant or fun-to-say combinations. Sometimes I’ll have to restructure a sentence just because it has one too many syllables–I get funny about my writing that way. Adages should be ignored and rules should be broken… at least every now and then.

Well you ignore the adages well. Yes, I can tell you love words. Scumble! What a great word. I was unfamiliar with it before I read this book. Do you read the dictionary for fun? Are you a painter? How did you decide on scumble? Or is a common word and I’ve just been living under a rock?

Ingrid Law:  So many people think that I made the word up. There aren’t actually too many words in the book that aren’t real. I don’t read the dictionary, but I do collect words. I have 4-5 “word of the day” sites I love. And if I’m reading and come across a new word I like, I’ll always write it down. “Scumble” just seemed like the perfect word for the “art” of learning to control a larger-than-life talent. If I understand it right, in painting, scumbling is a technique that ultimately helps balance all the hues in a painting, placing a thin layer of transparent paint over a tone that stands out too much so that it blends better with the rest of the image. If you think of that like a whole person, scumbling is like balancing all the elements of yourself so that no one thing (like the ability to make storms or hear other people’s thoughts, in the case of the characters in Savvy) takes over completely.

And yet, in your descriptions, you often paint in vibrant colors (and your fans are thankful because your characters are so much fun). Where did you learn how to describe people so quirkily? You have a sense of humor, obviously. You give us a thin man with thin hair, but he’s not just a thin man–he’s so thin he’d have to stand up twice to cast a shadow and his thin hair is combed over his head like a blanket (unless, of course, it’s flapping like a flag in one of Fish’s mighty winds). I can see the man hunched over, protecting himself, covering his bald head, holding his clipboard like a shield. He’s about to be blown over by the wrath of the preacher. And yet, he has that pink tie and that carnation on his overall strap and so I think there must be a something more to Lester—some bit of self-confidence. I mean, he’s wearing a pink tie. Come on. I guess my question here is: Did you plan all this out or did the people just plop onto the page with their pink ties and their combovers?

Ingrid Law:   Ha! Yes, often they do just pop into my head. I love quirky characters. But I think that everyone has something a little quirky about them. Most people just try to hide their quirks. That same character, Lester, also has a shoulder twitch when he gets nervous. So do I! I was kind of hoping that if I gave it to him, it wouldn’t bother me anymore. In a way it worked–I still do it, but now I share my quirk… and my sense of humor about it. I think our quirks make us interesting. And, because we all have them, even if we won’t admit to it, they help us relate to or bond with characters who have quirks of their own. Our quirks can tell stories about us, and we should always be proud of our stories–or be able to laugh at them!

Three characters I never laughed at were Mibs’ brothers. I loved those boys–especially the two I saw most. But because I loved Fish and Sampson so much, I felt a little cheated that I didn’t get to know Rocket better. I would have loved to see a little romance there for Rocket and Bobbi. Any plans for bringing all these characters back in future books? And what, pray tell, is Sundance?

Ingrid Law:  Sundance, Wyoming, is where Uncle Autry’s ranch is located… remember the end of the book? Rocket? Is going… where? Sundance is also where much of the next book takes place. And, as a fan of Rocket, I hope you will be pleased, because he’s in it much, much more… though, he will be older. There may be romance, but I’m still working on the story, so I don’t like to promise anything. I love this family tree of wild characters, so yes, there will be more. But the next book is told from the perspective of an all new character–one you’ve not met before in Savvy. Still, there will be familiar faces along the way: Samson, Gypsy… but for now, Mibs’s story has been told.

OK I had forgotten where Rocket was going. Yes! I’m so glad he will be in the next book. 

And speaking of glad…. I’m sure you were crazy with gladness when you saw the cover to Mibs’ story–Yikes! It’s so good!–and even crazier with gladness when the Newbery people called, but can you pick one moment in this wild ride you’ve been on and say it was the most satisfactory?

Ingrid Law:  I cannot pick one moment, no. It’s been such a series of amazing moments! I love the cover too! Brandon Dorman is a genius. He’s working on the next cover as well, and, so far, the sketches are amazing, I hope the book lives up to its cover! Aside from the Newbery call (ASTOUNDING), seeing the book in the store for the first time was pretty amazing. The call about making the New York Times Bestsellers List was cool, too… I was cleaning out the very last items from the mobile home I’d lived in for the last fourteen years when my agent called with the news. I couldn’t have moved if it hadn’t been for the book.

Wow. Living in a trailer. Do you know who else was living in a trailer as he was writing his first bestseller? Stephen King. He wrote Carrie on a board stretched between the washer and dryer in his mobile home. And…guess who else is writing great novels in her trailer?

That’s right. Me. 

I’m just saying. 

Writers are often shy and in the FAQ on your website you say, “Like Sampson, I prefer solitude.” Do you enjoy school visits, then? How is your new “stardom” sitting with you? 

Ingrid Law:  I never knew I had it in me to stand up in front of 350 kids and speak, but the kids always make my visits great! It’s hard not to have fun when they are such a great audience and ask so many wonderful questions. It’s true that I am a person who needs a lot of time hidden away in my own little world, but visiting schools has been fun. Now that I write full-time, school visits also help get me out of the house! Though, I do limit the number that I do. It uses a very different part of my brain and my personality than writing–one is so public, the other so private. My life has become one of social extremes. “Stardom,” however, is not a word that I warm to quickly, because it’s not one that I’ve ever longed to strive for. One of the comments I received after a recent school visit was “you’re just like a normal person who wrote a book.” I wasn’t sure if they were disappointed or surprised, but I was pleased to be able to show people that authors ARE just regular people too.

That’s very encouraging and I’m glad you’re giving that to the kids. 

This is your debut novel. I saw in a wonderful interview that you wrote this book in 2007. But what is your writing history? Had you been writing long before you got the idea for Savvy? Do you have manuscripts filed on some old hard drive or stored on floppy disks in the bottom drawer of your desk? (I’m kidding. I’ve seen your pictures. You’re hardly old enough to remember floppy disks.) Can you tell us a little about your road to publication, or give a link to blog posts on it, or something.

Ingrid Law:  I DO remember floppy disks! And yes, the first book I ever wrote (a mystery–and a bad one) was stored on one. I’d have no way of accessing it now, so I’m glad I printed it… though, nobody will ever, ever read it unless I’m dead. I began writing off and on over fifteen years ago, but I never took my writing too seriously until recently. So, yes, I have manuscripts in drawers and boxes–which is where they will stay! I’m all about moving forward. Savvy was the second manuscript I tried seriously to peddle. The one before it found 45 rejections from agents–including one from the agent who took me on as a client with Savvy. But I’m glad it got rejected now, or I might never have written Savvy.

Oh, I also have novels collecting dust and I also have collected some rejections I’m thankful for. The similarities between us are eerie. (OK what writer hasn’t collected rejections? But there is still that trailer thing. Many wannabe authors don’t live in trailers. Hm. I better shut up about it before they all get the idea to move.)

So, were you a reader when you were young? What were your three favorite books?

Ingrid Law:  I didn’t become a big reader until the fifth grade. After that, I loved the Anne of Green Gables books, the Lord of the Rings, and anything by Diana Wynne Jones. I didn’t give you three books, did I. I gave you three groups of books. I’m bad at favorites.

Eerie, I tell you. Anne and The Lord of the Rings are two of my favorites, also. And I adore Diana Wynne Jones’ story worlds. I was reading The Spellcoats when I had a huge breakthrough in how to craft a story world that felt real.

There were several things that I adored about Savvy, though. Quirky details but also theme. 

One thing Mibs learns is that we can all be happy with how God made us and what mean people say about us is not who we really are. But we have to silence the critical voices and listen to the encouraging voices. I loved the way Lester inflated under Lill’s praise and encouragement. She breathed life into him. You obviously want to encourage kids to find their own savvies and to know that no matter what people say about them, they have worth. Can you tell us a little about why this message is important to you? Did you start with the message or did it grow out of who the characters were?

Ingrid Law:   Actually, I think this all came out of the fact that when I began working on Savvy I promised myself that every time I had a self-critical thought about what I was writing, or thought “no one will like that” or “people will think that’s too weird,” I would ignore it. So writing Savvy became a practice in trusting my own voice as an author. That, then, got into Mibs’s character and helped shape her as well.

Well, it sure worked. You gave us a wonderful story with fun language, fabulous characters, and fathoms of depth.

Thanks so much for the interview!

And if any of you readers want more, Natasha has a really good interview up over at Maws Book Blog.

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