Sara and Brittany, authors of FAIRYLORE – 3 Questions & a Cover
A short interview wherein some of my favorite authors answers three questions about the writing life.
Question: What’s your Go-To source when you need inspiration?
Our go-to source for inspiration is always folklore and especially fairy tales. Fairy tales are good bones for a story, what you use to build structure, and you can do so much with those bones! If we’re feeling stuck, or longing for inspiration, one of our favorite things to do is try to retell one of these old stories in a completely new way. As fairy-tale scholars, we’ve seen a lot of different fairy-tale retellings over the years, so it takes a lot to surprise us, but that’s the challenge! It always gets our wheels turning (and will frequently spark completely new ideas too… or just get us unstuck from whatever other project we were working on!) It’s tempting to recommend that you seek out the most obscure tales for this, but we’ve found that, surprisingly, sometimes the most well-known stories still have new layers to unfold.
Question: In what genres have you written, and which one of them gives you the most satisfaction?
The genres that we’ve spent the most time writing in are among the least glamorous. In particular, we’ve spent an enormous amount of time writing academic prose (including a Master’s thesis and a PhD dissertation apiece), promotional copy for running our business, and emails! As for the genres you’d actually expect from authors, we’ve written non-fiction, like Fairylore, scripts for our streaming series on Dracula and urban legends, short stories, and poetry. All of these can be incredibly satisfying to write (including all those emails!) but we’ve come to really treasure the time that we carve out to write poetry. Writing a poem can be strangely meditative (when you’re not ripping your hair out over not being able to find that one perfect word) and is a genre that lends itself to busy people, because you can make good progress, and even write a whole draft, in one sitting.
Question: What one piece of advice can you offer to a writer who has yet to tackle the publishing world?
You have to write for yourself and write something that delights you. Yes, it’s useful to pay some attention to trends, but you cannot let trends dictate what you’re going to write. If you’re genuinely interested in what you’re creating, if you’re writing the book that you most want to see in the world, you are on the right track.
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ABOUT THE AUTHORS
Dr. Sara Cleto and Dr. Brittany Warman are award-winning folklorists, teachers, and writers with a combined 26 years in higher education and over 150 publications. Together, they founded The Carterhaugh School of Folklore and the Fantastic, teaching creative souls how to re-enchant their lives through folklore and fairy tales. In 2019, Carterhaugh won the Dorothy Howard Award from the American Folklore Society. When they aren’t teaching at Carterhaugh, they are scholars, writers and best friends who have published peer-reviewed articles, appeared on podcasts, sold stories and poems, written book introductions and encyclopedia entries, and written for magazines and blogs. You can stream their series The Real History of Dracula and Urban Legends Explained on the Great Courses Plus, and their first book Fairylore will be available for sale on February 10, 2025.