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INGA WINTER

writer-poet

Once in a great while, someone’s gift of words stops your heart with depth and beauty—and stops you in your tracks. I happened upon this gifted young woman’s blog and it was like putting my hand in a gourmet cookie jar...reading one installment was not enough, and I craved more. Her works are a mélange of gripping storytelling, luscious prose, human emotion, cultural textures, subsurface shadows, and a shimmering core of other-worldly goings-on.

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It is an honor to present Inga Winter—writer, storyteller, poet, deep thinker, wild child of Nature, artist, and multicultural scholar. I knew her interview would be a delicious five-course meal, so I fashioned it around the hope that we would be getting a soul-satisfying glimpse into her worlds. She did not disappoint.

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Inga lives in the wilds of New Mexico and in the inner realms she creates so beautifully in her writing… (I highly recommend her riveting Whispers in the Dark.)

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Here she is, in her own words, followed by links to her work online. Enjoy!
 

Q: Words are energy—and your work makes this very clear. As a reader, I get the impression that you are a sculptor who shapes words, a painter who uses the color of rhythm and sentence structure as her palette. Does this ability come naturally or is it an intentional discipline?

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A: I think it’s a bit of both, actually. I learned poetry before I learned grammar, and later I learned how to connect those two together to make something beautiful. From seven to ten I wrote a great deal of poetry, and though I moved on to other things, poetry is still the primary backbone in my writing. Learning how to use grammar and sentence structure to your advantage, how to incorporate poetry without it seeming overly pretentious or unbelievable. Adding these things in just the right touches, so that it leaves the reader feeling delighted at the descriptive quality of the writing, instead of overwhelmed or confused. These are all difficult skills to learn, but they have served me well over the years. I remember learning similes and how to write haikus when I was a child, and though I hated most grammar lessons, these were aspects of grammar that I actually enjoyed. Even now, when I write, I think back to those simple lessons, and how much they have aided me in my writing style today.

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Q: Your subject matter transports the reader to other realms where myth and everyday reality overlap in tangible, believable ways. It is evident that you have a very vast knowledge of folklore, fairy tales, mythology and human emotional experience, but a deep inner life must be necessary also. How would you describe your inner life, dreams, perceptions to life around you?

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A: I think my inner writer must have started awakening when I was still very young. I had a fantasy world that I surrounded myself with, starting at three years old. It was a place that I retreated to whenever I needed it most, a place where I felt understood, and most myself. That was where all my stories started, and in each of those stories, I played out the scenes and characters. In a way, I was an actor playing all the parts in a movie, with no audience but myself. Now that I’m older, I still enter that world, but through my writing instead of through play. In my writing I can meet those characters, I can reunite with them like one does with old friends.

 

Q: How do your ideas for stories come to you? Do you search them out or do they arrive unexpectedly?

 

A: They arrive unexpectedly, I never plan out my stories. I let each scene come to me as I write, and they often surprise me. I write from my heart, not my mind, so my stories aren’t always logical. Music really influences the way my story flows, and any given song I listen to while writing will basically set the theme, the setting, the lighting, and sometimes even the characters. This may change later, when I write longer novels, because with something that vast, it’s easy to get all the details confused if you don’t at least plan an outline.

 

Q: As a writer, do you see pieces of yourself in your writing? If so, is this intentional or do you only see it when you read a completed story and does this make you nervous about being revealed?

 

A: My emotions come through the most when I am writing. Writing is where I can express myself, it’s cathartic, and often when I read a finished product, I can see the emotions I was feeling as I wrote. When I don’t write for too long I feel choked, like how it feels when you haven’t had a good cry in a long time. So yes, it’s very intentional, and seeing myself in my stories actually brings me a lot of satisfaction.

 

Q: For a young woman not yet 20, you have a deep well of emotion and experience to draw from. What is your greatest resource creatively?

 

A: Undoubtedly, my parents. My mum nurtured me with fairytale, myth, and story from the very beginning. With her, everything always feels like a fairytale, she knows how to make things magical. How to bring out the flavor in the world. To me she was never mortal, she was always distinctly otherfolk. She’d just been born on the wrong side of the border. Like Sobena, from my story Whispers in the Dark, she taught me that being different isn’t a bad thing, and that if you utilize it right, it can be a gift.

 

Q: My papa always encouraged my interests and obsessions as a child, no matter how strange or random. He fired my passion for history, and history has been instrumental in my writing. Without history, there are no stories, and I’m so thankful to him for teaching me, even when I was an irate eight-year-old covering my ears because he wanted to quiz me on the Civil War. It’s also because of him that I have the confidence to make my own path, instead of adhering to the standardized route. He would tell me that my life is a story, and that I’m the author, that the pen is in my hand, and I can choose whichever path I wish to take.

 

Q: What cultures or mystical traditions ignite your passion and what about them fuels your inspiration?

 

A: Russian history and culture has long been a passion for me. When I was ten I read a biography on Peter the Great, something that my parents were concerned would be too dry and textbook for me. There was parts that had me nodding off, but I was determined to learn every detail I possibly could about this historical figure, (I wanted to be Peter the Great, and I may have also been a little in love with him) so I read it to the very end. I was so emotionally invested in Peter’s story, that I actually cried when I read about his death. Needless to say, my parents were impressed.

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Russian poetry and story often has qualities that we would call melancholic, they speak of tragedy and unrequited love, of philosophical quandaries that we can only guess at. Things that as a child, I found of the utmost importance.

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There are so many flavors steeped in the history of Russia. Wild passions that ignite with the thundering of Cossacks mounted on horseback across the steppes. The insane mind of Ivan the Terrible, the tragic love affairs of Catherine the Great, the religious mania and inexplicable miracles around the history of Rasputin. Even after all these years of studying Russian culture, I feel like I’ve only brushed the tip of the iceberg. Which is wonderful, it means that there is still so much more knowledge to be had.

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Scandinavian culture is the basis behind most of the stories I write. The Fjarlægur series’s main (and maybe only) influence is Scandinavian myth and legend. For me, Scandinavian culture is more than just a passion, it’s part of my heritage. Nordic stories are something that influence all of us, whether we know it or not, to this day. Tolkien’s entire middle earth was shaped by Nordic mythology, and today Tolkien’s stories are a cultural icon for many of us.

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Nordic folktales that tell of trolls, dragons, huldra-folk, heroes, and shield-maidens... all aspects that light up the memories I have of my childhood like beacons. In fact, most of my imaginary world was forged in the fires of ancient Scandinavian mythology. The word Fjarlægur, which is the name of my world, means ‘distant’ ‘far’ or ‘remote’ in Icelandic. While the name that I had for the landmass within the icy wasteland of Fjarlægur is Leyndarmál. Which means ‘secret’ in Icelandic.

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The cultures that have inspired me and fueled my desire to write over the years are endless. Mythology from throughout the British Isles; Ireland, Scotland, the Hebrides. Egypt, Greece, the Middle East, many parts of Asia, all these places that are so rich and alive, brimming with story and culture. So many stories from all over the world that I read as a child, stories that influence me and my writing to this day. In the future, I look forward to branching out and incorporating specific myths from these places into my stories. For now, I avoid writing stories based in areas I am less knowledgeable in, as I despise historical inaccuracy and misrepresentation of culture. As it is, writing spiced with Russian culture can be a risky endeavor when there is still so much I don’t know.

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Q: What do you see yourself writing in the near future? The distant future?

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A: In the near future I see myself continuing with retellings of folktales and myths, including adding new stories to my ongoing pet project; the Fjarlægur series. In the distant, I would like to start publishing my stories as books. I would also like to accumulate all my tales from the Fjarlægur series and write them into a novel, or a series of novels. It’s an adventure, a story in itself, finding out where these stories and their characters will take me. What new exotic lands will I find myself in? What new characters will capture my heart? A beautiful adventure, and I can only express my gratitude that I get to be a part of it.

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Q: When you look out the window, what are the things that capture your interest? Where does your eye follow when you are cooking or doing dishes?

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A: The shadows that the cottonwoods leave against the ground. I don’t really know why, but that’s where I most often find my eyes resting.

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When it’s nighttime, it is the stars that my eyes gravitate towards. Where we live is a dark sky sanctuary, among other things, and the stars are never more clear than during nighttime on the mesa. Though after all this time spent admiring the stars, the only constellation I can pick out is Orion’s Belt. As much as I’ve always been fascinated by the myths behind the constellations. It is the science that excites me the most, the knowledge that there are truly whole other worlds out there, so many things that we still don’t understand.

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Q: Do you have any rituals when it comes to sitting down to write? Do you use a computer or longhand? Do you keep a journal and do these entries feed the work you share with the world?

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A: I always grab a pair of headphones before anything else, I can’t immerse myself in my world without music. Almost always instrumentals, as songs with words tend to distract me. I’d like to say I have a ritual that I always follow before settling down to write, but honestly, I don’t. Sometimes the desire to write comes to me so strongly that I start writing my story in the middle of a conversation with someone. (Which they probably find irritating.)

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I use an iPad for all of my writing, I have a keyboard hooked up to it, and that’s basically it. I’m scared of laptops, they seem to have a magnetic field that invites any cup of liquid within several feet to enact catastrophe.

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I used to keep a journal, when I was younger, but not anymore. For me, my writings are like my journal entries. Many people, when upset or angry, grab their journal so they can release pent-up emotions. For me, if a long walk or a workout session doesn’t do it, I just get my writing supplies and start typing.

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Q: As an old soul in a fickle, shallow age, how do you nourish yourself, your muse, and your work?

 

A: I keep a somewhat cynical sense of humor, because even if the world is falling apart around us, at least it makes a good story. It’s not easy, for anyone, living in this world of overstimulation and high stress. So it’s important that we not fall to the dogs of either extreme, be it pessimism or optimism. I think it’s good to keep a realistic outlook on life, while staying humorous. See both sides, stay in the balance.

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I also read a lot of authors like Charles De Lint, Terri Windling, Jane Yolen, Holly Black... I could go on. Authors like these, they often place magical happenings in a modern context, using the culture we live in now to flavor these stories and make them more interesting. The Bordertown series is a perfect example of this, a series that is a collaboration of all these authors, and many more. For people like me who understand the world through story, stories told in this way and in these contexts, are essential.

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There was this book that was a bright light for me when I was going through difficult times in my early teens. Tithe, by Holly Black. I relate to the main character hugely. She’s not normal, she’s a little messed up, but she’s tough as nails, while not losing her childhood imagination and ability to make the most mundane things come to life. Stories like this, they are important, they are our bread and water, our armor, our sword. All things that we need in the difficult path that lies before us, a path that is often bristling with iron and thorn.

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Q: When you are alone, what do you dream about, ponder? What is a place your inner artist loves to go to? Describe your corner of the universe.

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A: When I’m alone I continuously talk to myself, either out loud or in my head. I’ve had people catch me at it before, and I probably look like a nut job, but it’s a habit I’m not really capable of breaking. Usually I’m making lists, planning my day, or motivating myself to do things. It’s like I have an army general in my head, getting that part of my personality that loves procrastination to get up and go. I know that sounds mundane, but I’m at heart a fairly practical person who likes to have things scheduled before I do them.

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My personal corner of the universe, the place where my inner artist comes out... that would be Fjarlægur. The imaginary world that I so fervently immersed myself in as a small child. When I was young, I entered that world by imagining myself as an actor on a stage. Now I enter that world through my writing. My writing is my personal universe, and it is now something that I can share with others. I can open the door for them and invite them in. My readers are Alice, and the writing that I share with them can, I hope, be their own wonderland.

 

Q: As a person, where would you like to see yourself in 10 years? And as a writer?

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A: I don’t ever try to imagine myself in any particular location, because for all I know, I could have a place set up in the city, the countryside, another country entirely, or maybe I’ll be back here in my childhood home. Wherever I am, I want to be doing what makes me happy and brings me the most satisfaction. I don’t care about following the norm or the standardized path. Some people try to plan their whole life out from point A to point

 

C. As a plan-oriented person, I’ve tried that method, and it didn’t work out for me.

Almost nobody truly knows what they want for their lives, and that’s alright, life isn’t a frozen dinner that you can just pop in the microwave. You have to figure out the ingredients, where you want to get them, how you want to prepare them, what you actually want to cook in the first place, which spices to add once you finally have it all figured out. And sometimes it still doesn’t turn out the way you want, and you have to start all over again.

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For me, I want life to be unpredictable, spontaneous, interesting, full of flavor and color. Maybe I’ll have a partner by the time those ten years have passed, maybe not. I don’t see any kids in my future, but I definitely see an overabundance of cats. As a writer, I would like to have made headway on the Fjarlægur Series. Hopefully I’ll have published some of my works by then, but if for some reason, no one was able to see my work, read my stories, or buy my books, that wouldn’t stop me. That would never stop me. I love it when others find pleasure from my writing, but that’s not why I write. I write because I need to. I write because it’s who I am.

 

Q: Choose any scenario—you as the heroine in your own story…who and where are you and what is your great challenge? Do you have a happy ending?

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A: This was probably the most difficult question for me, and I wrote several drafts before I found the one that felt true to myself. Partly inspired by Rabbit Heart (raise it up) by Florence + the Machine, this short story represents a metaphorical conundrum that I think many of us have to face, and how I personally, experience it.

 

The Lion With a Rabbit Heart:

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In the landscape that blurs the line between dream and reality, there is a canvas. This canvas is unmarked, white as a blank page. The canvas is a winter landscape, heaped with unblemished, sparkling snow. Amidst the snow drifts, there is a lion. The lion is waiting, perched within Baba Yaga’s pestle, wielding the mortar. Yet the mortar is no mortar at all, but a paintbrush. The lion has not moved forth, has not yet wielded the paintbrush against the glittered canvas of white. This is because the lion is afraid, you see, the lion is not lionhearted. This is a lion with the heart of a rabbit. This is a lion who is poised between turning back and going forward, struck by indecision like a lightning bolt between the shoulder blades.

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When the lion was a little girl, she wanted to be many things, but more than anything in the world, she wanted to grow up to be a knight. She wanted a sharp sword, a trusty steed, to be equipped with armor of gold and ivory, and to have all the miles in the world stretching before her. She thought that if she was a knight, she would never have to be afraid.

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The lion has answered the riddles rightly, has rescued Baba Yaga’s needle from the haystack, has made the dinner and swept the house. Now Baba Yaga has rewarded the lion with a paintbrush and a pestle. Baba Yaga has equipped the lion with armor of gold and ivory, an obsidian sword, a horse that never falters, and all the miles in the world.

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The lion had thought it would be easy, after that. Instead, the moment the lion entered the canvas, it was met with an onslaught of arrows. Arrows twisting from all directions like rays of light, whistling through the air to embed themselves in the lion’s flesh. Indecision, confusion, uncertainty, doubt... fear. Soon the snow is steaming with vibrant blood, and for a time, the lion allows itself to be hindered. It falls back, stumbling and broken, cowering in the shadow of the pestle.

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Then the lion knows, these are the foes that it will have to face if it wishes to push forward. Being a knight doesn’t mean you won’t be afraid anymore, being a knight means you have to face your fear.

You will have to duel him in an arena of diamonds and broken glass. Your fear is a champion, and he will throw you against the ground, over and over again. You can lie there on the ground, and allow him to trample you, succumb to your bruises and your pain. Or you can get back up again, you can teach your fear that he does not rule you. You are not his subject, nor his slave with head bowed as you serve him up your soul on a gem encrusted plate.

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No, you can be a champion too. You can catch him at his own tricks, and knock him to the ground. You can hold your lance against his naked throat, force him to yield, but you cannot kill him. You will face him, again, and again, but each time, you will grow stronger. You will come to anticipate his moves, and eventually, you may even learn to respect each other, in the way that sworn enemies often do.

So now the lion licks its wounds and pulls the arrows from its flesh. It mounts the pestle, draws its paintbrush, and rides forth to face the world. The lion leaves a trail of color in its wake, turning a canvas that was once white into a splash of vibrancy that stretches from horizon to horizon. All of the colors in the rainbow, and all of the shades in between.

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This is a story about a girl who wanted more than anything; more than jewels, silks, or all the fine things that lie beneath the sun, to be a knight.

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This is a story about a lion with a rabbit heart.

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