The Big Idea: Georgia Summers

Writing a novel doesn’t just involve sitting hunched over a computer typing away for hours, sometimes it involves wandering through Nordic forests that feel a little spooky, but also extremely magical. Author Georgia Summers went on a journey to craft her newest novel, Trollheim: Tale of Sýstir. Tag along through her Big Idea to see the forest and all it holds. GEORGIA SUMMERS: I’ve found that the core idea of a novel is something that I repeatedly return to, in every facet of writing and across all of my books. It’s a question that’s profoundly useful – from making big, crucial editorial decisions, all the way down to how to phrase a sentence or tease out a specific image. Strip away the skin, the muscle, and get right to the bone. But what if you weren’t writing your Big Idea? What if you were writing someone else’s? What does that question look like? For me, it turned out to be about trees. When Trollheim approached me to write a book based on Sýstir’s story, I had a lot of…