Marie-Aude Murail Talks Writing Process

Reader, I met her.

I braved the rain and my pathological fear of the French National Library's floor plan (Terry Gilliam's Brazil, anyone?).

I waited for an unreasonable amount of time. But I met her, the MAM!

What can I say? She was great. Fun, sweet, and inspiring.

This was my first time attending one of the BnF x France Culture’s monthly “En lisant, en écrivant” conferences where they invite an author and grill them about their writing process and their relationship to the written word.

Reader, you too can be touched by grace and listen to the whole thing here.

Back to the MAM. For those who don’t know her, here’s the cliffnotes version:

- The MAM is 64.

- The MAM has published over 100 books. We now have 3rd-generation MAM readers.

- The MAM has been translated into 22 languages (English being one of them!)

- The MAM has been awarded the Légion d’Honneur.

- The MAM’s siblings are also published writers. She co-wrote the Golem series with 2 of them (Loved it as a kid. Still have it at my parents’).

- The MAM got her PhD in French literature at 24 from the Sorbonne.

- The MAM has got to be one of the first French YA authors to feature openly gay characters in her novels.

- The MAM keeps rewriting her books published by L’Ecole des loisirs (they let her edit/update her novels before republishing them! This is the first time I hear about such a thing in YA).

MAM 2

MAM 3

Without further ado, reader, here is a summary of the topics that were broached (I apologize for my poor translation skills).

1. Marie Aude-Murail’s crazy talented family

“My mother was a journalist, my father a poet. All of my siblings are writers [Lorris Murail and Elvire Murail], except for one brother, who is a composer. I think there are families of creators. According to my mother, there is God, then artists, then the rest of us. I think I started writing to please her, to exist in her eyes. I also started writing for my little sister, who was 8 at the time. To be honest, our parents were always busy, and we were often really bored. So my sister and I would shut ourselves up in our room and change the world in our minds. We would imitate each other’s styles. This is how I became a writer.”

2. Marie Aude-Murail’s first published stories were… Harlequin-type Romances?!

“I started out by publishing 18-page stories in Intimité and Nous deux. It was a great learning experience, but I kept trying to add touches of humor, which was incompatible with the editors’ vision, so I ended up working for J’aime Lire and other Bayard publications.”

3. Marie Aude-Murail’s brand of humor

“I discovered that literature could be fun by picking up The Pickwick Papers and Our Mutual Friend in my father’s personal library, and I fell in love with Eugene Wrayburn’s brand of humor. And maybe also with Eugene Wrayburn! It was the first time I realized that stories could have a happy ending!”

“I write about ‘serious’ topics to find the humor in them. I approach every subject by asking myself what could be funny about it.”

“I sometimes go as far as using gallows’ humor, but not for younger readers. Humor is something that has to be learnt. Step by step, I help children acquire the whole gamut.”

4. Marie Aude-Murail’s style

“It’s all about finding the right balance between the formal and the informal. I don’t shy away from complicated words. I keep in mind the particular effect that I want to have on the reader. Nothing’s off the table in order to make characters believable. Besides, a world in which characters all speak in the same way would not be credible. They all have their thing.”

“Teachers are sometimes afraid that parents will complain. But I tell them that I identify with authors such as Raymond Queneau or Louis-Ferdinand Céline. As a Young Adult writer, I do have a responsibility, but that doesn’t mean that I should shy away from using vernacular terms or swear words. I am careful about the way in which I deal with sensitive issues in my novels, but stylistically-speaking, I don’t set any limits.”

5. Marie Aude-Murail and LGBTQ+ characters

“I wrote Oh boy! because I wanted to give readers a gay character that they could love. I live in a gay neighborhood, so it is a subject that is close to my heart.”

6. Marie Aude-Murail’s novels

“L’Ecole des loisirs keep republishing my books, that’s what they call long-sellers. Every time this happens, they give me the opportunity to make modifications to the text, because the world has changed, and something that was acceptable 20 years ago might not be so anymore. I try and make the relationships between men and women more balanced, more equal. I can sometimes change certain aspects of a character, a macho for instance, because back then I thought he was sexy. Now I just want to punch him. I also have young readers proofread my new and improved drafts. It’s important to me that my novels still ring true and still make children laugh. The room to grow is limitless.”

7. Marie Aude-Murail’s views on Children’s and Young Adult Literature

“Doing research in YA has given me arguments to stand up to editors and publishers and push for what I want, for my vision of YA literature.”

“Young readers are like wax, this is why books that people read when they’re young make such an impression. A reader that I met at a book signing once told me that Oh Boy was the most important book of his youth because he had no one to talk to about his sexual orientation, and that my novel was the only thing that made him feel understood, and less alone.”

8. Marie Aude-Murail’s thoughts on the writing process

“I have volatile readers. With adult readers, writers can afford to be more complacent. But young readers don’t do boring – soit l’histoire est bonne, soit tu t’emmerdes. I have to grab their attention at every moment.”

“I have learnt a lot from crime fiction. The trick to keep young readers hooked is to keep a secret. Retention is an art.”

“I don’t have any taboos. My only real limit is the French 1949 law on children’s literature [which allows for the censorship of books that “de-moralize” children: back then “de-moralize” was interpreted as having to do with morals – i.e. American superhero comics = bad, Franco-Belgian BD = good, now it refers to children’s morale]. I strive to bring vitality to children, to make them want to enjoy life, and want to find their place in the world.”

“I sometimes exaggerate traits to create an effect. It’s a fine line between this and a caricature. I now think that one of my character in Oh Boy is a bit of a caricature of the effeminate gay. But Têtu Magazine awarded me the Folle d’Or so I guess it’s fine? I am a lot more careful these days; people have become a lot more susceptible.”

“I try to apply Dickens’ idea of the streaky bacon [i.e. that a good melodrama presents “the tragic and comic scenes, in as regular alternation, as the layers of red and white in a side of streaky well-cured bacon”, Oliver Twist]. In my novels, I try to make my readers alternate between laughing and crying.”

“I like writing novels for both a naïve and a savant reader, who read on different levels and get different things out of them. This is what a good novel is: a novel that can be interpreted in different ways.”

9. Aude-Murail’s thoughts on the co-writing process

“Lorris, Elvire and I worked on the Golem series for 2 years. It was the only time we worked together, it was right after our mother died. We found ourselves in our childhood home and writing together was our way of going back to the times when we played together as children. This project was our way of staying in touch and grieving our mother together. Elvire worked on the outline; Lorris and I wrote alternate chapters and we proofread each other’s work. This was a real learning experience, because when your brother write “meh” in the margin, it kind of hurts your feelings!

Aiiight, now it's time to go to your local library and (re)read the MAM! Happy readin'!

#Frenchliterature #Humor #FrenchAuthor