Kate Racculia is a writer and researcher, living the sweet life in Somerville, Mass and working on her second novel. Her first, This Must Be the Place, was published by Henry Holt & Company in summer 2010.
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Do you have a day job, something you spend your time doing beyond writing books?
I do. I work full-time as a prospect researcher in non-profit development (fundraising). I’ve been at my current job since last summer, and before that I was a kind of specialized technical marketing writer—an RFP, or Request for Proposal, writer—working in investment marketing for nearly five years, also full-time.
How do you fit in time for writing? What does your daily/weekly schedule look like?
Through sheer force of habit. I’m a weekend writer, and try to spend at least one if not both weekend days focused on writing for an uninterrupted three- to four-hour block, usually between noon and four. I’ll either write at home in my apartment or out at a coffee shop, with plenty of ambient sound and a big glass of iced chai nearby. My writing habit is fueled by caffeine and turkey-pesto sandwiches.
My first day job in investment marketing, while a great gig in many ways, was high stress and not terribly creative. In that respect, it actually made it easier for me to make time to write. I was spending forty-plus hours a week drafting proposals about equity investment strategies and fundamental research analysis, and so the act of writing fiction became a necessity. As corny as it sounds, and boy do I know it sounds corny, I wrote for the love of writing, to keep the part of me that loved books and imagining and playing with words alive.
My current job is both less stressful and more analytically creative, so fiction is no longer something I crave as an outlet. But I thrive on busyness and my weekend writing habit is already well-developed; while I love my day job now, supporting myself as a writer is the ultimate goal, so the writing continues apace. Doesn’t hurt that I’m a big fan of order and routine, and can compartmentalize (in a healthy way, I swear) like a champ.
When people ask what you do for a living, what do you tell them?
Great question. The answer has evolved over time. Back when I was an RFP writer working on my novel one weekend at a time, I told people I was just that: an RFP writer, which was usually greeted with a polite “and what is that?” or glazed eyes. The polite responders would also hear that I was working on a book in my free time.
When people ask me what I do now, I say I’m both a writer and a fundraising researcher. I do lead with writer, though. I don’t know why, but I don’t think of myself as an “author”…maybe because I consider the act of writing itself, the making-stuff-up with words, the part I love best. I am a writer; I write. Every time I call myself a writer, it’s a little reminder of how important it is to me, and how much I love to do it.
It’s that “for a living” phrase that’s the killer—before I was fortunate enough to have my novel published, I lived off the work I did nine-to-five (or -six or -seven). And while I still technically live off my day job compensation, I live for the hope that someday I can support myself writing. And I like working, I like being busy and having set times for different kinds of employment and thoughts. After all, Wallace Stevens sold insurance his whole life. His Wikipedia entry hilariously lists his occupation as “poet, insurance executive”.
What kind of path did you take on your way to becoming a published author? (Did you get short stories published in journals? Did you have blog or some other writing outlet at first?)
I’m a novelist, all the way. Even when I was writing in middle school—young adult stories that were clearly knock-offs of my favorites at the time—I always thought in novel-length terms. I enjoy reading short stories but I’m not very good at writing them; I feel cramped and claustrophobic and like I’m just gearing up when it’s time to be done. Developing characters is way too much fun, and to see them walk out of my life after fifty pages feels like a lost opportunity. I wrote short stories for my MFA (at Emerson), and had a few shorter pieces published in student magazines. I had a blog I updated very infrequently. More like…never (but it did serve as the birthplace of the Pride and Prejudice Drinking Game). Because my writing time and energy were limited to the weekends, I approached the task with a lot of focus—and my focus was on the novel form. My novel is actually my first major published work.
So even though you’re a published author, do you still feel as though you haven’t “made it” until writing novels if your only job?
Having my book published was, without question, a dream come true, so in that sense, I do feel like I made it. I’m published; it actually happened, and I couldn’t feel more humbled, lucky or grateful to everyone—from my agent to my editor to my publisher and publicist—who made it possible. But I think less in terms of I’ll have made it when (x) happens than I do I want to accomplish (x). There’s always another goal to work toward, and the working-toward-it part is the fun part.
Why did you decide to pursue an MFA?
Writing fiction is something I’ve done all my life, but, until grad school, I never had any real guidance. The craft part of fiction was something I’d just picked up from reading other books, without understanding what I was doing, why, or how I could do it better. So I thought an MFA would both teach me those concrete skills, give me time to develop them, and help me grow a tougher skin about sharing my work with the world.
How did getting an MFA shape the path between who you were before and who you are now?
It made me a better writer, by simple virtue of the fact that it made me write more—more often, in more styles, with more method and understanding, and in the company of more writers. Also, the non-writing classes I took, like copyediting, helped make me more marketable for a nine-to-five.
Beyond that, my MFA—specifically, the pile of student loan debt my MFA entailed—directly inspired me to get up and write my novel. It absolutely did. If I was going to cut a check every month to pay back the loans I’d taken to get my degree, I was going to USE that degree, damn it.
What are you working on now?
Another novel! This time I’m writing a murder mystery set at a weekend retreat for uber-talented student musicians, held at a creepy old hotel in remote upstate New York. I love mysteries, from Agatha Christie to Kate Atkinson, I love horror (Stephen King, I’m looking at you), and I love music. I’m also interested in the way society treats the performing arts and performers, particularly the young and the talented. What happens, psychologically, when you know you have an incredible artistic talent, but you’re not good enough to be that one brilliant phenom and you can’t use it to make a decent living otherwise?
…which kind of ties directly into your questions about day jobs and artistic pursuits. Wouldn’t it be amazing if we had more professional and semi-professional concert bands and choirs, and people could legitimately live off their skills as a musician? Who decided it was “worth more” to work in an office than an orchestra, or that playing music wasn’t “work”? What can I say; I’m a band geek at heart.
What are you struggling with now? Is there anything different about how you approach your current project, after having published a novel?
Everything’s different now, except for how nothing is. Which is my obnoxiously cryptic way of saying that while my day job, my apartment, and most of the other patterns in my day-to-day life while I wrote my first book have changed, the fundamentals—that I love to write, and that this is what I’m going to spend my life doing—are exactly the same.
Funnily enough, though—my first book is basically a love story (among other things). It’s fairly chipper and bright and while there’s a lot of angst, as befits a coming of age story, it has a happy ending. I think I needed that optimism almost as much as I needed the creative outlet from my stressful nine-to-five. Now that I’m a happier, less stressed-out person at my current job, the novel I’m writing is full of murder, anxiety, and chaos. Though I’d like to think it’s still pretty funny.
