Eva Stachniak is, I’m pretty sure, my first guest author born and raised in Poland. The Winter Palace, her first novel of Catherine the Great, became an international bestseller and was on both The Washington Post’s notable fiction list and The Globe and Mail’s best books of the year. Her second Catherine novel, Empress of the Night, which is already on Der Spiegel bestsellers’ list, just released in the U.S. yesterday. Enjoy her story about coming to writing after a career as an academic! – Meg
For many years I’ve been an academic and a teacher of literature, both in Poland and Canada. The truth was—however—that I wanted to be a writer. Always, from that day in my childhood when I discovered that books were written by real people, and not all of them were long dead.
Middle age can be the time for courage; the hum of passing time is a potent call. In 1933, I had just I turned forty, and I was an unpublished author of a few short stories, which were making their rounds through a number of Canadian literary magazines. As my stories awaited their fate I saw a flier advertising Humber Summer School for Writers. I applied. The letter of acceptance is still one of my sweetest memories, and the sentence … admitted to the workshop led by Margaret Atwood.
When the student is ready, a teacher will appear, says a Buddhist proverb. At the first session of the week Atwood asked us to comment on the first short story we have all been assigned to read. I thought the story perfect, far superior to anything I’ve written so far. Everyone must have thought the same, for the comments were all enthusiastic. They were also, as I recognize now, not very useful for a writer trying to improve her craft. They praised the beautiful language, analyzed the story’s meaning, its metaphors, symbolism. Atwood listened to us all with just a tiny smile on her lips. When her turn came, we heard her famous acerbic monotone: “The story is happening in 1960s, right? The characters are in the back of a car, necking…right? So: Where is the bump?” Seeing that we didn’t quite get what she meant, she explained: “These big cars, in the back seats, had a bump. The woman would’ve felt it against her bare back.”
Eureka, I remember thinking, so this is what it means to read as a writer, to learn the craft! It was not the only lesson I learned that week, but it was the most important one, for it turned me into a writer. Since then I’ve published four novels: Necessary Lies a story of a Polish immigrant to Canada who returns to the country of her birth to confront her past; Garden of Venus, an 18th century tale of an extraordinary Greek woman who transformed herself from peasant to countess and the two novels; The Winter Palace and its most recent sequel Empress of the Night, both inspired by the life of Catherine the Great.
Why did it take me so long to become a writer? I’ve always been an avid reader. In the Communist Poland where I was born and raised, I knew that as long as books existed I would never be alone, that a good and wise book would enrich and sustain me like the best of friends. But such a conviction comes with a price. I got so much from reading that I began to see the act of writing as a sacred obligation, a vocation worthy of the chosen few. Confronted with such legacy, I did the second best thing—I studied and then taught literature in the English Department in Poland, until—in 1981—I was offered a scholarship to McGill University in Montreal. Three months after I arrived in Canada, Solidarity was crushed, Poland was under martial law, and I knew I would never go back. “Where are you from?” was the question that made me realize how much—in spite of my academic obligations—I wanted to tell my own stories, stories of the lands behind the Iron Curtain where I grew up.
Having been an academic, I know how to do research, find meaningful details in the wealth of historical materials. I know, to quote Annie Proulx, “which mushrooms smell like maraschino cherries and which like dead rats.” In the years since that Humber workshop, I’ve also learned how to present history without sounding like a lecturer, how to render the past alive through smells and touch and sounds. I’ve learned how to build the drama of a scene, create suspense, plausible dialogue that sounds natural and yet is also carefully planned to carry on the plot or characterization.
I know my strengths and weaknesses as a writer. I trust the messiness of the writing process. I’ve learned to write better and better novels.
Writing is a gamble. It requires commitment, long hours of solitary work. Success is elusive and there are no guarantees. This is why it’s important to hold on to what nourishes us on this long journey, helps us get through inevitable rejections, dry spells, long periods of uncertainty.
For me there are two precious sources of such sustenance. The first is a community of other writers—my fellow travellers. Some of them are long dead or have no idea of my existence, but their books sustain me, nevertheless, inspire me, and confirm my conviction that good writing matters. Others—thank God—are very much alive and have become my writer-friends. I learn from these writers, I cherish them; I trust their advice and their example. They are my sounding boards, my models.
The second source of nourishment are my readers. I picture them as I write. I love when they find the time to write to me, share their love for the characters I imagined and created in my books.
I took a look at my writing journal from the time of the Humber workshop and found a list titled, My writing goals:
1. Read poetry every day. Learn its rhythms by heart.
2. Eliminate distractions.
3. Read for the craft. Spot turns, developments, pitfalls other writers fall into.
4. Be mindful of your own writing pleasures. These will become your new goals.
5. Watch for frailties of your own writing.
6. Keep re-writing until the story is perfect.
7. Keep in touch with other writers. Become part of a writing community. Sustain and be sustained…
I still hold them dear, every single one of them. – Eva
