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People Are Locked Up In All Sorts Of Ways.

-Emma Donoghue

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People Are Locked Up

Emma Donoghue

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People Are Locked Up In All Sorts Of Ways.

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With My First Book, I Was Hired To Write A Draft Of The Script. I Was So Young And Less Confident. They Put Me Through Seven Or Eight Drafts And It Was Just Getting Worse And Worse, And Then The Film Was Never Made.

I Say "on Principle" [regarding 'lesbian Writer'] Because Whenever You Get One Of Your Minority Labels Applied, Like "irish Writer," "canadian Writer," "woman Writer," "lesbian Writer" - Any Of Those Categories - You Always Slightly Wince Because You're Afraid That People Will Think That Means You're Only Going To Write About Canada Or Ireland, You Know.

I Was Not Exploiting Any Real Individual's Story In Writing Room, Of Course I Was Aware That My Novel, By Commenting On Such Situations, Would Run The Risk Of Falling Into Those Traps Of Voyeurism, Sensationalism And Sentimentality.

Identity Politics Are Wearisome; You Don't Want To Go On Speaking For Any One Group As A Writer.

Identity Politics

People Move Around So Much In The World, Things Get Lost.

The Sound Of The Pages Turning Was The Sound Of Magic. The Dry Liquid Feel Of Paper Under Fingertips Was What Magic Felt Like.

I Think It Would Be A Shame For Any Writer To Let Their Publishers In Any Way Corral Them Into A Single Genre.

Kissing A Witch Is A Perilous Business. Everybody Knows It's Ten Times As Dangerous As Letting Her Touch Your Hand, Or Cut Your Hair, Or Steal Your Shoes. What Simpler Way Is There Than A Kiss To Give Power A Way Into Your Heart?

Seriously, I Think What All The Puzzling Over Parenthood I Had To Do To Write [a Novel] Room Taught Me Is That Children Can Thrive In A Remarkable Range Of Situations.

I Always Wince A Little Bit When I Send Me To Each Of My New Books. I Wince At Submitting Myself To My Father's Judgment. But, Of Course, He's Such A Fond Father That He Always Writes Back, Saying It's The Greatest Thing Ever Written.

Change For Your Own Sake, If You Must, Not For What You Imagine Another Will Ask Of You.

We're Standing On The Deck That's All Wooden Like The Deck Of A Ship. There's Fuzz On It, Little Bundles. Grandma Says It's Some Kind Of Pollen From A Tree. "which One?" I'm Staring Up At All The Differents. "can't Help You There, I'm Afraid." In Room We Knowed What Everything Was Called But In The World There's So Much, Persons Don't Even Know The Names.

Feminism Is Still One Of Those Taboo Words, So Hardly Anybody Talks About It. People Usually Go Gender-neutral And Say The Book And Film [room] Are About "the Triumph Of The Human Spirit.

I Really Like To Keep My Palette Small But To Be Very Intense, Very Myopic.

There May Be Certain Genres That Men Dominate, But Fiction Not So Much. The Question Of Prizes Is Tricky Because There Are So Many Prizes.

I Think There Are Few Films Out There That Take Motherhood Seriously.

Once I Spent A Whole Day There, A Blade Of Grass In Each Hand To Anchor Me To The Warm Earth. I Watched The Sun Rise, Pass Over My Head And Set. Ladybirds Mated On My Knuckle; A Shrew Nibbled A Hole In My Stocking While I Tried Not To Laugh. Such A Day Was Worth Any Punishment.

The Collector [john Fowles Book] Does Such A Good Job Of Capturing The Mindset Of A Capturer, And Also That's Become A Banal Trope Of Every Second Crime Novel: The Weirdo, Fetishistic Watcher/stalker/kidnapper/kidnapper Of Women Or Children.

I'm A Huge Planner, More And More So As The Years Go By.

Some Writers Can Produce Marvelous Plots Without Planning It Out, But I Can't. In Particular I Need To Know The Structure Of A Novel: What's Going To Happen In Each Chapter And Each Scene.

A Memoir Is Always The Most Authentic Telling Of A Situation, But A Novel Gets To Different Places.

I Remember Manners, That's When People Are Scared To Make Other Persons Mad.

When I Was Four I Thought Everything In Tv Was Just Tv, Then I Was Five And Ma Unlied About Lots Of It Being Pictures Of Real And Outside Being Totally Real. Now I’m In Outside But It Turns Out Lots Of It Isn’t Real At All.

Books Are The Air I Breathe, So I Don't Notice The Seasons.

Every Parent Has Those Moments Where They Look At Their Child And Think, 'there's A Demon In Those Eyes And No One Can See It But Me!

People Don't Always Want To Be With People. It Gets Tiring.

I Think About Old Nick Carrying Me Into The Truck, I'm Dizzy Like I'm Going To Fall Down. "scared Is What You're Feeling," Says Ma, "but Brave Is What You're Doing." "huh?" "scaredybrave." "scave." Word Sandwiches Always Make Her Laugh But I Wasn't Being Funny.

Writing Stories Is My Way Of Scratching That Itch: My Escape From The Claustrophobia Of Individuality. It Lets Me, At Least For A While, Live More Than One Life, Walk More Than One Path. Reading, Of Course, Can Do The Same.

What Writing Room Taught Me Was That I Know Exactly How To Be The Perfect Mother, But I'm Not Willing To Do It For More Than Ten Minutes At A Time.

Everyone's Got A Different Story.

And As The Years Flowed By, Some Villagers Told Travelers Of A Beast And A Beauty Who Lived In The Castle And Could Be Seen Walking On The Battlements, And Others Told Of Two Beauties, And Others, Of Two Beasts.

You're Meant To Have An Unhappy Childhood To Be A Writer, But There's A Lot To Be Said For A Very Happy One That Just Let's You Get On With It.

Unhappy Childhood

When People Write To Me With Stories, They Are Never Ones That Work For Me. There's Something Mysterious About Which Ones Catch You.

She Leaped Into Space, High, Higher Than She'd Ever Been In Her Life. She Came Down With A Clean Snap, And The Crowd Scattered Like Birds From The Swing Of Her Feet.

I Got In The Habit Of Giving Away A Book As Soon As I've Finished It Because I Lived In A Housing Co-op At Cambridge And Had No Space To Keep Books.

Sometimes You Must Shed Your Skin To Save It.

I'm Finding That Success Is Way More Time-consuming Than Failure Ever Was.

For All The Books In His Possession, He Still Failed To Read The Stories Written Plain As Day In The Faces Of The People Around Him.

I Look Back One More Time. It's Like A Crater, A Hole Where Something Happened.

So Much As I Enjoy Big Novels Of Epic Sweep, I Often Find, Say, If They Follow Several Generations, By The Third Generation, I'm Not Caring About The People Anymore.

I Think I Read Susan Brownmiller's Classic Book Called "femininity" When I Was About 16. So Yeah, It's Been Part Of My Mindset Since A Very Early Age. To Me, What's Crucial Is To Tell Women's Stories But Also To Tell Them In A Way That Is Fearless.

I Found Motherhood A Crash Course In Existentialism (what Is My Purpose In Life, Am I Mistress Or Slave Of My Destiny, When The Hell Do I Get Some Sleep?) And [the Book] Room Was The Result.

[e]verywhere I'm Looking At Kids, Adults Mostly Don't Seem To Like Them, Not Even The Parents Do. They Call The Kids Gorgeous And So Cute, They Make The Kids Do The Thing All Over Again So They Can Take A Photo, But They Don't Want To Actually Play With Them, They'd Rather Drink Coffee Talking To Other Adults. Sometimes There's A Small Kid Crying And The Ma Of It Doesn't Even Hear.

Writing Is Nearly Always A Matter Of Finding Whatever Your Brain Needs To Trick It Into Being Creative, And In My Case, A Tiny Little Bit Of Fact Just Seems To Work.

Writers Should Be Applauded For Their Ability To Make Things Up.

Any Parent Knows How To Be The Ideal Parent.

...sometimes I Suspect That What Had Really Happened Was That We Became More Resigned, More Cynical, Raised Our Pain Thresholds As We Lowered Our Expectations. All In All, Settled For Less.

At The Door, There Was One Of Those Moment When Two People Realize That They Like Each Other More Than They Know Each Other. This Is Nicer Than The Opposite Situation, But More Awkward. You Try To Remember The Protocol For Touching. You Hate To Gush, Or Presume To Much, Yet You Are Unwilling To Let The Moment Pass Without Without Some Gesture

With A Time-based Medium Like Theater Or Film, You Can't Have The Audience Getting Restless In Their Seats. They're Stuck There On Their Bums; You Have To Pay Enormous Attention To Pace And You Can't Lose Your Way.

The World Is Always Changing Brightness And Hotness And Soundness, I Never Know How It's Going To Be The Next Minute.

I Was Highly Aware, In Writing [the Book] Room, That There Are Unsavoury Aspects To Our Interest In Such Cases, And I Thought It Was Rather Honester To Include Discussion Of Media Representation In The Novel Itself Than To Cling To The High Moral Ground By Merely Avoiding Scenes Of Voyeurism, For Instance.

Maybe I’m A Human, But I’m A Me-and-ma As Well.

I Actually Tried To Think Of The Story [room] In Gender-neutral Terms At First And Said To Myself, "ok, Would This Work If It Were A Man?" Well No, You Can't Make A Man Pregnant, So It's Got To Be A Woman.

If I Was Made Of Cake I'd Eat Myself Before Somebody Else Could.

Me And Ma Have A Deal, We're Going To Try Everything One Time So We Know What We Like.

I Needed To Do A Lot Of Saying No. I Had A Lot Of [interest] From People Who I Just Didn't Think Were Quite Right For It. And I Didn't Want A Bad Film To Be Made Of The Book, Either A Sentimental One Or A Creepy One, So I Did A Lot Of, "no Thank You." Then When The Right Filmmaker Came Along, Yes, I Suppose I Presented Myself Very Much As Wanting To Be The Writer.

Vitamins Are Medicine For Not Getting Sick And Going Back To Heaven Yet.

The Film World Is Far More Male-dominated. I Mean, The Numbers Are Staggering At The Level Of How Many People On Set There Are, And Almost All The Trades In Film, There's A Lot More Men. So I Can See Without Anyone Intending To Be Biased [that] We Have Kind Of A Collective Choosing Of Men's Stories And A Collective Of Taking Men's Stories Seriously.

If You Have Written Something That The Film People Want, Like A Book, It Does Give You A Way In.

When I Was A Little Kid I Thought Like A Little Kid, But Now I'm Five I Know Everything

It Turns Up The Heat Under A Narrative When You Limit The Characters In Their Movements Or Their Freedoms.

I Thought One Way To Try To Hold On To The Power Was To Write The Script Myself. That Way, I Could Say To Filmmakers, "i'm Not Asking You To Hire Me Unseen. I'm Just Saying, 'here's My Script. Can We Work Together?'" So That Worked Out Well.

Working Together

I Wrote The Novel [room], And Then I Thought, "this Could Work On Film, And I Want To Be The One To Do It." So I Went Ahead And Drafted It.

You Know Who You Belong To Jack? - Yeah. Yourself. - He's Wrong, Actually, I Belong To Ma. P. 261 Room By E Donoghue

I Guess The Feminism In "room" Springs To Mind Most.

I've Certainly Seen Stats That If You Have A Woman Director Or A Woman Screenwriter, The Number Of Female Characters Goes Way Up.

Nowadays, 'invisibility' Was Supposed To Be The Big Problem, But The Way I Saw It Was, All That Mattered Was To Be Visible To Yourself.

Before I Had Kids, I Thought You Should Never Lie To A Kid. But Now I've Had Them, I Realize You Almost Lie To Them By Definition, Because If You're Trying To Summarize Something For Your 1-year-old, You Put It In Very Simple Terms. You Only Gradually Complicate The Explanation As They Get Older.

I Read Three Books A Week.

There Are Some Tales Not For Telling, Whether Because They Are Too Long, Too Precious, Too Laughable, Too Painful, Too Easy To Need Telling Or Too Hard To Explain. After All, After Years And Travels My Secrets Are All I Have Left To Chew On In The Night.

What's Crucial About Being An Executive Producer Is That You Stay In The Loop, Information-wise. They Have To Share All Their Major Decisions With You.

...real Loneliness Is Having No One To Miss. Think Yourself Lucky You've Known Something Worth Missing.

Stories Are A Different Kind Of True.

The Way To My Heart Is Through Belgian Milk Chocolate.

I'm Really Aware That In Fiction, Women Are Pretty Much Equal. There's A Lot Of Very Successful Women Novelists. Not So Much [for Women Writers Working] In Film.

There's Not A Thing Wrong With You, You're Right The Whole Way Through.

When I Tell Her What I’m Thinking And She Tells Me What She’s Thinking, Our Each Ideas Jumping Into The Other’s Head, Like Coulouring Blue Crayon On Top Of Yellow That Makes Green.

The Great Thing About A Short Story Is That It Doesn't Have To Trawl Through Someone's Whole Life; It Can Come In Glancingly From The Side.

People Are Locked Up In All Sorts Of Ways.

I Tend To Be So Lost In The Work That I Don't Notice The Weather. My Partner Will Come Home And Say, 'beautiful Day, Wasn't It?' And I'll Say, 'was It?' As I Won't Have Noticed The Real World At All.

The Idea Was To Focus On The Primal Drama Of Parenthood: The Way From Moment To Moment You Swing From Comforter To Tormentor, Just As Kids Simultaneously Light Up Our Lives And Drive Us Nuts. I Was Trying To Capture That Strange, Bipolar Quality Of Parenthood. For All That Being A Parent Is Normal Statistically, It's Not Normal Psychologically. It Produces Some Of The Most Extreme Emotions You'll Ever Have.

The Paradox Of Publicity Is That Even As We Do It, We Know It's Killing Off The Chance Of Another Reader Happening Across Our Book In The Ideal State Of Innocence.

It's Painful To Consider Anything But Writing.

I Am Clumsy, A Late And Nervous Driver, And Despise All Sports Except A Little Gentle Dancing Or Yoga.

I Watch His Hands, They're Lumpy But Clever. "is There A Word For Adults When They Aren't Parents?" Steppa Laughs. "folks With Other Things To Do?

In The Publishing World, Most Editors Are Probably Women. So I Don't See The Publishing World As A Male-dominated One, Especially Within Fiction.

There Are So Many Examples Today Of How The Kind Of Wonderful Zealousness And Unquestioning Loyalty Of Young People Can Be Harnessed By All Sorts Of Insidious Powers.

I Must Say, In The Case Of "room," Both The Book And The Film, I Don't Think Being A Lesbian Author Held Me Back At All.

I Think Ultimately The Film 'room' Is A Kind Of Hymn To Motherhood And To The Everyday Heroism Of Parents Who Find Their Smiles In Terrible Times.

For All That Being A Parent Is Normal Statistically, It's Not Normal Psychologically. It Produces Some Of The Most Extreme Emotions You'll Ever Have...

In The World I Notice Persons Are Nearly Always Stressed And Have No Time...i Don't Know How Persons With Jobs Do The Jobs And All The Living As Well...i Guess The Time Gets Spread Very Thin Like Butter All Over The World, The Roads And Houses And Playgrounds And Stores, So There's Only A Little Smear Of Time On Each Place, Then Everyone Has To Hurry On To The Next Bit.

My Mother Was Wonderfully Out About Her Dementia. She Would Sort Of - She Would Say To Me, I Came Out To The Window Cleaner About Having Dementia. You Know, I Love The Way That Verb For Coming Out Of The Closet Has Now Become So Socially Useful For All Sorts Of Situations, Like When You Need To Explain To The Window Cleaner That You Don't Know If You Paid Him Or Not.

...sentences Swallowed And Sung Back And Swallowed All Over Again. She Was Made Entirely Out Of Words.

I've Always Been Religiously Inclined, But It Doesn't Come Up In Most Of My Books.

I Read A Lot Of Social History. If I'm In An Art Gallery And A Picture Intrigues Me, I Immediately Write Down The Title And I Google It. I Do A Lot Of Googling And Looking Out For Good Stories. I Can Almost Smell Them Sometimes.

Goodbye, Room." I Wave Up At Skylight. "say Goodbye," I Tell Ma. "goodbye, Room." Ma Says It But On Mute. I Look Back One More Time. It's Like A Crater, A Hole Where Something Happened. Then We Go Out The Door.

It's All Real In Outside, Everything There Is, Because I Saw An Airplane In The Blue Between The Clouds. Ma And Me Can't Go There Because We Don't Know The Secret Code, But It's Real All The Same. Before I Didn't Know To Be Mad That We Can't Open Door, My Head Was Too Small To Have Outside In It.

You Cannot Predict Literary Success; The Only Way You Can Possibly Aim For It Is To Do Your Thing And Do It Well.

I Think I Know What It's Like To Have A Family That The Outside World Sees As Peculiar Or Lacking.

Something We Do Know Is That Review Coverage Does Go To Male Authors More Than Women Authors. That's A Fact. I Think It's One Of Those Examples Of Unconscious Bias: If You Hire A Lot Of Male Journalists, They're More Likely To Pick Up The Latest Ian Mcewan Novel Than The Latest A.s. Byatt Novel.

Everybody's Damaged By Something.

This Is A Bad Story.” “sorry. I’m Really Sorry. I Shouldn’t Have Told You.” “no, You Should,” I Say. “but—” “i Don’t Want There To Be Bad Stories And Me Not Know Them.

I'm Very Keen. Adaptations Of Other People's Work, Too. I Got Fascinated By The Adaptation Process, So I Think That'd Be A Really Interesting Task. I Would Happily Write Original Screenplays As Well. I Think It's Become One Of My Favorite Genres.

Sometimes When Persons Say Definitely It Sounds Actually Less True.

I Think Sometimes The Way To Preserve The Magic Of A Book Is To Throw It Away - Meaning, Not To Cling To The Way A Book Does Its Magic But To Find A Cinematic Equivalent.

I'm Really Not One Of These Procrastinators Who Cleans The House In Order To Put Off Writing, But Life Gets In The Way.

Ma's Still Nodding. "you're The One Who Matters, Though. Just You." I Shake My Head Till It's Wobbling Because There's No Just Me.

I've Been Writing Full-time Since I Was 23.

Sometimes, I Think There's A Lack Of Ambition In Me. But Then Sometimes, I Think, No, You Can, Like William Blake Said, You Know, See Heaven In A Grain Of Sand. If You Look Really, Really Closely At A Situation, You Can Find Almost Endless Interest In It.

I Was Anticipating That Some Readers Might Misread [the Book] Room Itself As A Hymn To Homeschooling.

He [ma's Tooth] Was Part Of Her A Minute Ago But Now He's Not. Just A Thing.

I Hate Desks; They Make Me Feel Like A Child Doing Homework.

Scared Is What You're Feeling. Brave Is What You're Doing.

I'm Named After Jane Austen's Emma, And I've Always Been Able To Relate To Her. She's Strong, Confident But Quite Tactless.

I've Been In A Long And Happy Relationship For 22 Years And It's Never Inspired Me To Write Anything. It's Too Good - Nothing To Say. Problems, Conflict, That's What Makes For Good Stories.

I'm Very Interested In How Idealistic Young People Can Get Caught Up In All Sorts Of Systems Of Extreme Belief, You Know, Whether It's Cults Or Whether It's Suicide Bombers.

We Used To Call It Her Cinderella Complex, Because Often When She Had Agreed To Go Out In The Evening She Would Be Seized By Panic And Announce That She Had Nothing To Wear.

It’s Called Mind Over Matter. If We Don’t Mind, It Doesn’t Matter.” When A Bit Of Me Hurts, I Always Mind.

Actually,the Nightmarish Thought Occurred To Me That With Electronic Delivery Of Books Becoming A Norm, Soon Writers May Be Expected To Provide Several Versions Of Their Book, Ranging From The Easy To The Complex, And Buyers Will Choose What They're In The Mood For With The Click Of A Button! I Do Hope Not.

Now That I've Got A Way In [to The Industry] - Because It Can Feel A Bit Like, "how Can I Possibly Write A Film?" - But Now That I've Got At Least Some Experience In The Film World, I'd Absolutely Love To Do It Again.

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