Overcoming Fear: A Conversation with Author V.E. Schwab
From the outside, V.E. Schwab’s life looks as charmed as they come: Signed with a literary agent by 19. First book deal by 21. Well over a dozen books by 33, with her most ambitious to date, The Invisible Life of Addie LaRue, released just this week, along with news it will be adapted into a feature film.
Funny, then, that much of her life has been spent trying to overcome fear — fear of failure, fear of death, even fear of “contentment,” which she worries bleeds into “creative stagnation,” Schwab said Wednesday at an online event sponsored by the Miami Book Fair and Books & Books.
In fact, it was such anxiety that led the normally prolific Schwab to take 10 years to write her latest novel. It’s a story about a young woman born in 17th century France who makes a deal with the devil to escape the expectations of her era. She gains freedom and immortality, but the price is high. No one remembers her. Not her parents or neighbors. Not her lovers. No one, that is, until 300 years later, when she meets a young man who works in a bookstore.
Schwab—whose work encompasses middle-grade, YA and adult fantasy and science fiction, including Vicious and the Shades of Magic series–admits that The Invisible Life of Addie LaRue is a more literary novel than she’s attempted in the past. And it took her a while to give herself permission to write it.
“I was scared to death of it. It was a fear of my own inadequacy,” she said. “It wasn’t the timeline that scared me; the feelings scared me. I was terrified of writing a character novel instead of a plot novel. There was no magic, no explosions.”
So how did she overcome this fear?
Schwab has long been open about her struggles with mental illness, particularly anxiety, panic disorder, OCD, depression, and disordered eating. She’s encouraged others to seek help, as she has. But in this case, she moved past her doubts by realizing she feared something else even more than failing to tell the story perfectly.
Failing to tell it at all.
“I realized I was going to die before writing this book. One fear had to eclipse another for me to start,” she said.
During the event, the New York Times bestselling author sipped whiskey from a teacup — the brand, fittingly, was Writers’ Tears — and answered questions from the audience and the event moderator, author Rebecca Roanhorse. (Roanhorse’s own novel, Black Sun, hits shelves next week. To get a free taste of her style, check out one of my favorite short stories of hers, Welcome to Your Authentic Indian Experience.)
Together, they talked about their writing craft (obsessing over first lines and extensive outlines), art appreciation (Schwab has a master’s degree in art history) and the way relationships change us.
Some reviewers might call the connection between Addie and the handsome, devil-like character of the novel, Luc, romantic. But Schwab pushed back on that characterization:
“It’s definitely not a romance. It’s a very complicated relationship. They become central to each other’s lives because, oddly, they are all that lasts. She draws him to humanity. He draws her away.”
In the novel, although no one can remember Addie LaRue, the character possesses a sort of “hope and defiant joy,” Schwab said. She learns how to leave her mark on the world by becoming a muse to other artists.
Schwab said Addie’s journey is a counter-narrative to all the stories she’d read about immortal men who “joie de vivre their way through history … who get really bored” being able to do whatever they like to whomever they like.
“A woman would never have that luxury. There’s always someone trying to erase her,” Schwab said. Nevertheless, Addie’s “absence of ego allows her to inspire, to affect history. Ideas are wilder than memory.”
In her own life, Schwab said she has grappled with how much of herself to reveal and how much to erase to meet society’s expectations. One reason she writes adult novels under her initials, V.E., instead of her first name, Victoria, is because she knows some readers of traditionally male-dominated science fiction and fantasy only want to read books written by a man. (Yes, this sound crazy in the year 2020. But she’s had male fans admit they would have never read her books if they’d known she was a woman ahead of time. It’s the same reason Harry Potter is written by J.K. Rowling, not Joanne Rowling.)
“I had to do a self-erasure in order to get people to pick up the books,” she said.
Schwab is also gay, and she recently wrote about the long process of coming to terms with her sexuality in Oprah Magazine.
When one audience member asked Schwab how and why she manages to be so forthright in public about her various struggles, Schwab recalled being a young, insecure writer. The only thing she saw online at the time were authors trumpeting their own success.
“I felt like a fuck-up,” she said.
It wasn’t until later, when she got to know some of the same authors in person, that their truth came out. And she vowed to be more open.
“I was like, ‘Screw you. If you had been more honest, I wouldn’t have had so much doubt,’ ” she said. “I’m going to be as honest as possible about creative struggles. If that makes someone feel less alone in this game, I’m willing to be uncomfortable. We all feel like imposters.”