The Fountain
by Casey Scieszka
Interview by
Ellen Birkett Morris
Most authors have a favorite book from childhood, one that held their attention and made them want to be a writer. Casey Scieszka followed that inspiration and created The Fountain, a compelling tale of Vera, who returns home for the first time in nearly two hundred years in search of the source of her immortality. Vividly drawn and emotionally compelling, the fountain explores what it might feel like to live forever and whether or not that is as ideal as it might seem. Scieszka shares her writing journey here:
AUTHORLINK: Tell me about your apprenticeship as a creative writer. Did you have a mentor who offered advice that you can share with us?
SCIESZKA: My dad is a children’s book writer— Jon Scieszka (THE STINKY CHEESEMAN AND OTHER FAIRLY STUPID TALES, THE TRUE STORY OF THE THREE LITTLE PIGS)— so he has been my creative writing mentor for literally as long as I can remember! He’s shown me what it means to be a working writer. How there’s freedom t and self-direction, creative collaborations, plus plenty of outside industry forces completely out of your control.
His main advice is deceptively simple, and something I’ve gathered from him by watching: Try it! As in, have an idea for a book? Just try it! Because you’ll never know if something works until you’re actually playing with it on the page.
AUTHORLINK: James Dickey said the idea for Deliverance came to him as a vision of a man standing alone on top of a mountain. His job was to get the man off the mountain. Where did the idea for The Fountain come from?
SCIESZKA: I can trace the seeds of this idea back to my 5th grade classroom where we read TUCK EVERLASTING by Natalie Babbit. It tells the story of a young girl who stumbles upon a magical stream that gives eternal life and the immortal family who guards it. It raised so many juicy “what if” questions that lingered with me. Decades later, when I was sitting on the stairs outside my house in the Catskills, notebook in hand, ready to start something new because the novel manuscript I’d been working on had gotten too messy and bloated, I knew that this new story would a) follow an immortal woman who felt very conflicted about her state of being but b) take place up here in this place I’d come to know so well.
AUTHORLINK: You’re tackling big questions in The Fountain about the meaning of life and the desirability of immortality. Did these topics every feel too big to take on? If so, how did you get around that?
SCIESZKA: When I begin something, I’m usually less aware of the themes and topics I want to get into and more driven by a character in a particular situation, and when I approach it like that— like I’m following this character into uncharted territory alongside them—everything feels more bite sized. Personal. So while I knew this book would ultimately take on big questions like “What’s the point of a life no matter how long or short?” it was not intimidating to write when I could ask myself simply, “Well, what does Vera think about her life right now while standing in her old living room two hundred years after she first left it?” As more characters came to fruition, I could ask them the same questions and they’d have very different answers, which all together make for a larger conversation about the themes.
AUTHORLINK: Your depiction of Vera is so well drawn. How did you go about building her character? Did your depiction of her change much from your first conception to what we see in The Fountain?
SCIESZKA: Thank you! In some ways it’s so hard to remember her as anyone other than who she turned out to be, but I can say that in early drafts she spent more of her time feeling quietly conflicted and slightly unmoored, and that as I honed her story, her convictions became more and more clear, as did how she would and wouldn’t change over the course of the book.
AUTHORLINK: Critics have mentioned your ability to balance the mundane with the spectacular. Talk about the role of the mundane and small ordinary moments in stories exploring topics as large as immortality.
SCIESZKA: It’s my favorite part! And I’m so flattered folks are appreciating that blend because it’s huge part of what drew me to this topic in general. It wasn’t epic, full-fantasy world-building. (High five to folks who live for that and do that well!) It was the nitty-gritty, and even tedious parts of being immortal in life as the rest of us know it that intrigued me. If you moved every few years so as to not arouse suspicion, how would you deal with work references? What would getting bank accounts be like? How would you cover up accidentally miraculous happenings in front of your friends and what would those little slip-ups be? What about the state of your relationship with your brother after several centuries of this kind of thing? Your mother? Would familial power dynamics always be in play, or would they shift enormously over such enormous amounts of time? Fun stuff too. Like, if you’ve lived through two centuries of modern advances, what would your favorite inventions be? And not just life-changing stuff like air travel, but the small things like nail polish and disco music.
AUTHORLINK: Without offering any spoilers, how did you decide how to end the book?
SCIESZKA: This part came to me Dickey/Deliverance style about halfway through the first draft. I suddenly had the final image in mind and then, along with Vera, had to figure out how to get there.
AUTHORLINK: What was your greatest challenge in developing The Fountain?
SCIESZKA: Not getting too lost in Vera’s previous lives. While I certainly dip into them, I eventually had to make sure that any telling of them served the purpose of her story in modern day. There’s a bunch of fun historical stuff that wound on the cutting floor that was a blast to imagine but ultimately didn’t belong in the book.
AUTHORLINK: What advice do you offer apprentice writers about craft, staying encouraged in the face of rejection, or both?
SCIESZKA: For craft: Read more! It will make you a better writer. And not because you’ll be copying technique and/or style. (Though sure, there’s something to be said for that as a writing exercise). Everything you read will turn into tools for your own toolbox, even unconsciously, and you’ll find yourself refining what makes your particular voice/story/style etc both a part of the larger conversation and something entirely unique.
As for staying encouraged in the face of rejection: I’ve been told and will tell others, that when it comes to finding an agent and/or an editor, it only takes one yes. Sure, you might get rejected by a dozen others, but you ultimately only need one agent to represent you, one editor to publish your story. These are the ones who will ultimately help you find many readers!
AUTHORLINK: You run an artists residency in the Catskills. Talk about the value of this kind of experience, dedicated time to write, and community for writers.
SCIESZKA: When I opened up the Spruceton Inn: a Catskills Bed & Bar, my mantra to myself was, build a place you would want to go to. And that included the Artist Residency. I created—with my husband, artist and author/illustrator Steven Weinberg— the kind of Residency that would interest me. A no-cost, low-ask application. A no-strings attached, free stay. A length of about a week so that it could it fit more easily into the rest of your life. Opportunity for community but no required workshops or group crits. And most importantly: time away from the usual hum of your daily life to dedicate solely to your art. It is heartbreakingly easy to let art take a backseat to the logistics of a lived life sometimes, and there will always be a necessary push and pull of what takes the lead when, but I know it’s such a gift to have someone else say, “No, you cannot do your laundry right now or your grocery shopping or your emails. This is time just for you and your art.”
I’m so thrilled that giving this to other artists happens to greatly inspire me in my own art making, too.
AUTHORLINK: Discuss what you are working on now.
SCIESZKA: I’m famous with my friends and family for being tight lipped about what I’m working on until it’s finished, but I will say I’m writing!
Casey Scieszka is a born and raised Brooklynite who has lived in Beijing, San Francisco, Fez, and Timbuktu where she was a Fulbright Scholar. In 2013 she and her husband, artist Steven Weinberg, moved to the Catskill Mountains and opened the Spruceton Inn: a Catskills Bed & Bar, which runs an annual Artist Residency hosting world-renowned painters, bestselling authors, and Pulitzer Prize and National Book Award finalists.
