WATER FOR ELEPHANT [140]
DW: How do you approach plot? Do you outline and work out the shape of the story in detail before you write, or do you leave that until revision afterward?
SG: For Water for Elephants, which was the first historical thing I’ve written, I did all the research ahead of time. I needed to feel that I knew the subject matter in and out.
I hate outlining. I hate outlines, hate them, hate them.
I usually know what the crisis of the book is going to be, though I don’t know how I’m going to get there. I try to make it bad enough that I don’t know how I’m going to get out of it. And when I get there, I have to get out of it. I just get myself geared up, and I write every day and see what happens.
DW: Has your technical-writing background helped, or has it been a hindrance?
SG: It was great training. For one thing, it taught me to sit down and write for eight hours a day. For another, it taught me not to take personally editorial comments. The first instructional project I gave to an editor ten years ago came back covered in red. I was practically in tears. It has to be a thousand times worse if it’s a piece of fiction, but I don’t take it personally anymore.
It also proved to me that I was able to produce a work of this size. And because I have been doing this sort of thing for so long, although I don’t outline, I think I have an inherent understanding of structure, where things should rise and fall. It’s good training.
One thing: it’s really freeing to be able to use adjectives again. In tech writing, they always want you to cut every word that doesn’t belong. Every day, they’re reminding you that every word costs forty cents to translate into each language. That took me all of two weeks to get over.
DW: Did you get up close and personal to elephants in your research?
SG: At the Kansas City Zoo, I observed the elephants with their ex-handler for a couple of days, taking notes on body language and behavior. I got into the habit of walking up to elephant handlers at the circus and saying, “Hi. I’m writing a book. May I meet your elephant?” I got lucky twice.
The first time was right after I’d been out with this elephant handler at the Kansas City Zoo who had been gored by an elephant. He took a tusk through the thigh, one through the rib cage, which just missed everything vital, and another through his upper arm. So I still had that in mind. I was standing beside this huge thing with his amber eye staring down at me. The guy said, “Go ahead. You can touch her.” I was shaking, but I touched her. I said, “Okay, I’m done now.” Several months later, I met the second one. It was one of these little circuses that throws a tent up and says, “Free tickets!” And then it’s twenty-dollar popcorn. I snuck out of the big top because it was small and pretty cheesy, but during the show I asked to meet the elephant; the handler gave me a bucket of peanuts and stuck me in an enclosure with this thing. He shut the gate. I was alone with this African elephant. I was looking at her, and she was looking at me like, This is not part of the usual repertoire. So I fed her the peanuts. By the end of it, she was such a love bug. I was hugging her and kissing her, posing for photos. She gave me a kiss, a big, sock puppet, mushy elephant kiss with the end of her trunk. It was really memorable.
DW: Do you have a lot of contact with animals in your everyday life?
SG: I have two dogs, three cats, two goats, and a horse—not to mention the three sons and a husband. As far as animals go, that’s usually it, but I have, for some reason, a bird’s nest on the front porch, and I often tape it off if the mailman or other people are ignoring my warnings to go around the back door. And if there’s an orphaned anything in the neighborhood, or a stray cat, people know I’m the crazy