Cecelia has answered some of your questions below
I would like to know if you had any "say" in the casting Hillary swank in P.S. I love you.
Valerie Capdepont
No I didn’t have a say in the casting of Hilary Swank but if I had had a say, she would definitely have been a name that would have passed my lips. I think casting her was an extremely clever and brilliant decision as it brought the story and the film to new levels. I have always been a fan of Hilary with ‘Boy’s Don’t Cry’ being my favourite and I was so excited, and proud, when I heard she’d be my “Holly.” PS I Love You isn’t your average ‘romantic comedy’, it has so much more to it, a darkness that is rare to that genre, and Hilary Swank brought such depth to a role that could easily have been lost by how it was cast and how it was adapted. I owe a lot of gratitude to Richard LaGravanese who both wrote and directed the film. As for Gerard Butler, I think he walked straight out of the pages of the book and did an absolutely superb job. Playing Holly is a very different role to what we are used to seeing Hilary play but that’s what I really loved about her playing the part, I like to see actors show different sides to themselves. She is one of the greatest actresses of our time and I’m so proud that she chose to play Holly.
Dear Miss Cecelia Ahern, I love every book that you've written. it is so interesting, each of them! I really love your creation! gosh. oh glory! I wanted to ask you if you have ever considered to make WHERE RAINBOWS END as a film.. I would really loveeee to watch it in your perspective.I mean I have my own imaginations but I just wanna see it in real life. YOUR NO1 FAN!!
Noor Amalina Mohamed Noor
Thank you! Yes, Where Rainbows End has been optioned by Simon Brooks Productions. We have recently just closed the deal and I’m looking forward to the day – with crossed fingers - that it will be made. It’s such a long complicated process from being optioned to actually being made so hopefully I’ll be as fortunate with Where Rainbows End as I was for PS I Love You. I’m interested to see how a story that spans fifty years, being told in the form of letters, will be executed and I’d be particularly excited to see Rosie Dunne’s name in lights. Rosie is a dreamer and that’s something that she’s always wanted – I’d be extremely pleased for her if she makes it to the silver screen.
What kind of advice would you give a person wanting to be a writer?
Kayla Kirby
Everybody has different advice when it comes to writing. I don’t believe that you can force your own method on to other people but I can share with you what I do and so bearing that in mind, an important piece of advice is to find your own style. Find the environment that suits you to write. Silence is an inspiration to me. Space is so important. Left alone for an hour, my mind starts to create. Scenes begin to fill the empty spaces and the sounds of those scenes and characters voices fill the silences. My belief is that if you wake up in the morning, or in the middle of the night, and all you want to do is write, then you’re a writer. There is no magic formula to being a writer and there is no magic formula to writing a book. It’s something that comes from deep inside that cannot be taught in any writing class. It’s something you feel compelled to do. How do you write a book? You sit down at a table with a pen and paper and you start to tell the story. It’s as simple as that. I would tell writers to listen to their characters, truly understand them, and they help you to write your story. Of course there has to be a certain structure but that only follows after finding your story and your characters. I think when people analyse stories, that analysis happens afterwards, the writer wasn’t consciously following rules as they went along, they were merely telling a story, following the course of story telling. I see my stories as a journey that I take with my characters. You have to introduce your characters, you have to set up the story, you have to embark on the story, travel through the story, allow your characters to often lead the way, then you reach your destination that should feel right without having taken any short cuts or U-turns or circles and then end it when the journey’s complete.
I think that aspiring writers should find their own voice, don’t try to repeat what is already done because it seems to be successful, do your own thing. Don’t be afraid to do something different. I think it’s important to have people you trust reading your material so that you’ll get honest answers and that you’ll respect their answers. Feedback is very important, encouragement is very important. Writers are like little buds, the more encouragement that’s sprinkled, the more we grow. I think it’s very important to have an agent. My agent and I work as a team, we encourage one another and understand each other and when it comes to dealing with the publishers it’s so important to have somebody who understands the publishing world and who can protect you and bring you to the right place.
How do you go about structuring your books?
Maria Nestorides
I always come up with the concept first, and then the characters follow. I always begin a book knowing the ending, various scenarios that will happen throughout the story and it’s a case of putting the pieces together like a jigsaw and making sure everything adds up. In terms of creating the story, I think of a scenario, take for example A Place Called Here. I was intrigued by the thought that when things go missing, they must go somewhere else. They can’t just disappear, there must be a place that they’re in, a place designed for missing things. It started as a fun daydream, imagining a land filled with car keys, mobile phones, ear-rings, scissors – all those aggravating things that we misplace or that disappear as soon as we put them down on a surface and turn around for an instant and find that they’re gone. It was a fun idea but then I thought about the fact that people go missing and it immediately changed the tone of the story. It was darker, more eerie and it intrigued me. The mood of the story changed. Then I thought about what kind of a person would find themselves there. Then I thought of a woman who was searching for missing people. How ironic. And then I took that idea of irony and created Sandy’s character. For example she was six foot tall but had a surname of Shortt, so that even her name didn’t feel comfortable with her. She had a dark head of hair but was called Sandy. She searched for missing people but went missing herself. And then the story began to unfold naturally. The story jumped between Sandy and the other missing people, and those family members who were searching for them. I balanced magic reality with the harsh reality of those who are left behind searching. How awful an ordeal that is for the family and friends. I always like to keep a balance in my stories. Where there’s darkness, there can be light, where there’s sadness, there can be happiness, where there’s despair, there can be hope, and when people get lost, they can be found. Even when I’m writing more unusual storylines that go beyond the normal boundaries, I must keep the characters real and their emotions real. If people haven’t necessarily experienced what the characters are going through, they will understand their emotions and so they can identify with the character regardless of the journey.
For Thanks for the Memories, I saw an advertisement on television, which talked about the six degrees of separation, and the image that was used was blood running through a tube and into somebody’s vein. Immediately it occurred to me that we are all linked to each other in so many ways, ways in which we don’t even realize. I started to think about two characters, which could be linked through a donation. Then the following day I saw a documentary about people who’d received heart donations. Some reported feeling unusual personality traits which they never had before their transplants and on meeting the families of the heart donors, realized they were very specific traits of those who’d donated. I felt like that confirmed my idea for me. I wondered about our organs, I thought about the fact that they’re not just organs, but that perhaps they make us who we are. They are inside us, they keep us alive and what if the blood that rushes around our bodies carries with it not just platelets and blood cells but an innate sense of who we are and what makes us who we are; our passions, our desires and our memories. Then I thought about what kind of people I’d like to put into this story. The idea of somebody’s blood (though it would be broken down and mixed with others) that pumped from their heart and saved somebody’s life seemed to be a romantic thing for me and I knew instantly that I had another love story on my hands. Though Joyce lost a life inside her, she gained another one in Justin. She felt as though an emptiness in her had been filled and Justin, after donating and after just experiencing a difficult divorce felt that a part of himself was missing, was with somebody else out there and in order to feel complete he must find that person. That’s how that story and those characters came about. Joyce’s father Henry was a character I was intending to use for another story but I was saving it until it felt complete. I needed something extra for his story and couldn’t quite complete it, so I stole him from the other idea and it seemed perfect for me to place him as Joyce’s father, which felt like a very natural choice. As soon as he was plopped into Joyce’s life, he really shone and brought a wonderful feel to the story. I think he’s the star of the show and one of my favourite characters that I’ve created.
What time frame does Where Rainbows End, span across?
Louise Quinn
Rosie and Alex are best friends at school from the age of five and it spans through their teenage years, their twenties, their marriages and their children, all their problems of each decade until their fifties. That’s where the story ends but it’s where theirs just begins.
Hi there, can you please tell me when Thanks for the Memories will be published in the US? I've read all your books & just love them, they're all very differet stories. Thanks!!
Michele Rybakowski
Thanks for the Memories will be published by HarperCollins US in April 2009
Hi there, I just wanted to know if you found refuge in your writing? I am working as a part time legal secretary and I am hoping to start a Law Degree in Sept. I always find that sometimes its hard to stay focused, living 50miles from my family,working, looking after my partner and my daughter and now hopefully I’ll be studing. I find refuge in learning, it helps me get away from everything. When the learning becomes too much and I’m ready to explode with everthing, I just sit back and read one of your books,it helps me to relax and i love them!! so I was just wondering if you find your serenity in writing or what do you do to get away from it all??
Xx Tara O'Brien
Yes I find that writing is a real form of escapism for me. While I’m delighted that other people find such joy from my books, I actually, quite selfishly, write for myself! I find that I get lost in my head, lost in a world that I’ve created. I get swept along with the characters and their issues that I don’t notice the time ticking by. Apart from when I’m with my family, I feel at my happiest when I’m writing – just lost in the flow of ideas and it gives me a sense of great freedom. I love creating, I think that is a wonderful way for me to work through my own problems, it’s a form of therapy, I suppose. And I feel cheeky that’s it’s also my career!
I am a big fan of yours, my favorite book by far was Love, Rosie. How did you come up with the idea of the whole book written in letters?
Jennifer Shkoukani
Ever since I was young I kept letters, postcards, bank statements, letters of acceptance, school reports, school journals, diaries – absolutely everything in the written form. I would often spend hours reading through the collection and realized that these documents alone were telling the story of my life. I kept and printed out every email from the beginning of my writing career – the first email to and from my agent, to and from my first editor etc – and reading over these emails tells the story of how my writing career began. It struck me that it would be a wonderful device to use in a novel and I had never seen it been done before. When people read it, they feel as though they’re able to read some of the private, secret letters of others. It’s a way of legally peeping into somebody else’s life and also gives people the most honest insight into somebody’s soul. It’s the characters’ life stories all in their own words. Of course as soon as the concept came, the characters quickly did too. I wondered what kind of people would communicate all of their lives, why would they communicate in this way, and so, Rosie and Alex were born. I also think that when people write, something more intimate pours out. People reveal parts of themselves that they don’t usually reveal when they’re speaking. I think the written word is so precious that to have somebody write to me is far more thoughtful than an email or a text. It’s something that can be held and kept for all time. Read and re-read, analyzed and treasured and so the love story of Rosie and Alex began.