Born in London, Temi Oh is a graduate from King’s College London (in Neuroscience) and a postgraduate from the University of Edinburgh (in Creative Writing). Her studies brought together a vast breadth of scientific knowledge with her love and aptitude for writing of all stripes. Her debut novel, Do You Dream of Terra-Two?, fully intertwines these areas of expertise—telling the story of an interplanetary team on a twenty-three year mission to reach a new, habitable planet… and the dangers, within and without, that they face.
In this interview, Ogilvie editors Calder Hudson and Angela Hicks talk with Temi about the process of writing and publishing her first novel—discussing her reflections and insights on the book’s journey from its initial draft to its publication on March 7th, 2019.
When you began your Creative Writing postgraduate degree in Edinburgh, you’d only recently completed your Neuroscience degree. How did your scientific expertise feed into the book—or did the book help shape your interests in science?
Throughout my undergraduate degree, I worked on the book—after lectures, during the holidays. In my final year, I signed up to study the Extreme Physiology Module, where we learnt about what happens to the human body under extreme conditions such as high altitude, hypothermia, diving, and zero-gravity. I attended talks delivered by guest lecturers including Dr Kevin Fong, who told us about working in A&E and about space travel. Dr Anna Bagenhol —who was revived after a skiing accident that caused her heart to stop for hours—delivered a lecture about the body’s reaction to hypothermia. The module also provided a great opportunity to do some first-hand research into the life of an astronaut. Our group went on a trip to a human centrifuge at Farnborough where I was spun around a 60-foot metal arm until I reached 3.5 G (so my body was 3.5 times heavier than normal). I kept asking the operator to push the acceleration up. I closed my eyes and tried to imagine how my characters would feel launching into space. I felt dizzy for two days afterwards.
Speaking of characters—Do You Dream of Terra-Two? features a number of different Point-of-View characters. Was it hard to find individual, distinctive voices for each one? And was there one you kept coming back to more than the others—a favourite perspective to write from?
While writing each character, I tried to remember that everyone believes that they are the hero of the story. It was a bit like method acting—trying to fully inhabit each character while writing them, taking into consideration how their previous experiences might shape their current behaviour.
It’s a little irrational, but it feels unfair to have a favourite. Like taking sides.
In early drafts, there was one additional PoV character, Solomon, who was later cut. Was it difficult to remove a core member of the cast?
Oooh… behind the scenes secrets! I never feel emotional about cutting anything. It’s like sawing off a rotting limb. When I reached the point where I realised Solomon had to go, it was the only option. Although he was a great character and I liked him, I had to consider his role in the story as a whole.
Can you tell us more about the editing process the book has undergone, and what it’s taught you as a writer?
Thanks to the people in my workshop group in Edinburgh, I wasn’t a complete newbie when it came to the editing process. With their suggestions, the first couple of chapters were pretty polished by the time I sent the book off to agents. But, it’s a long book and when I got an offer from my agent, she said, “I think the book is good, but it needs some work. And some re-writing.” She helped me perform plastic surgery on the novel for a few months before we sent it out to editors; it was such a new collaborative experience because I’d been working on the book alone for so long and in some places, I’d got stuck.
I have so much to say about the editing process! In the first stage, it was really intensive, huge structural changes. For the next couple of re-writes we focused on tone, style, consistency. Family I spoke to during that time baulked at the thought of anyone suggesting I make changes to the book. But I think it’s important to emphasise that editing is teamwork. Everyone has a different editorial style, but, in my experience, my agent or editor would identify problems and plot holes and it was my job to bite my nails for a few weeks and think of solutions. Other times, my editor might suggest her own solution to a problem, and if I agreed with it, I’d get to skip the nail-biting stage and think about a way to write it.
Copy-editing was the best because, by that point, I had made all of the difficult changes. My publisher sent me a track-changes document that the copy-editor had already gone through, fixing grammar and pointing out (for example) scenes where the sun sets twice. After we’d finished, it was so gratifying to read. Awkward phrasing hammered out, prose like silk.
Are there any authors who really influenced your writing in Do You Dream of Terra-Two?
I had a real problem with dialogue, like a kind of tone-deafness. For years, people who read my writing would say that the prose was quite lyrical but the dialogue often sounded stilted.
I endured a couple dark months of the soul wondering about this—about how to fix it. And then I read Eleanor Catton’s The Rehearsal. It’s a gorgeous book where the characters burst into unexpected soliloquies in every chapter (In the beginning the saxophone teacher says: “I require of all my students… that they are downy and pubescent, pimpled with sullen mistrust, and boiling away
with private fury and ardour and uncertainty and gloom…”) and I realised that, in fiction, a writer is allowed to have the same stylised fun with dialogue as with the rest of the prose.
Do you have a particular writing process? Are you a coffee-shop sort of person? Late-night writer?
It’s always changing. I really wish I had a routine. I wish I had Murakami’s routine (I read that he gets up at 4 am, writes all morning, and then runs for 10km or swims for 1500m) but, for me, Writer’s Block is some resilient strain of sickness that’s soon resistant to whatever I try.
Throughout my teen years, I wrote all the time. All weekend on my laptop facing out onto the council flats on the street opposite. When I got Writer’s Block I’d walk down to Londis, buy a bag of jelly-babies and by the time I’d finished slowly eating them I’d have an answer to whatever it was I was worried about. Maybe that’s why I have so many fillings now.
In university, and especially in Edinburgh, I had set up a really nice writing desk with all my books, but I’d spend most of the year writing on the floor in front of the electric heater.
I need lots of coffee. I seem to work best when I’m slightly sleep-deprived and when it’s dark outside (early morning or late in the night) when I don’t feel as if I have a lot of other options and when no one would pick up the phone if I tried to call.
I wrote 50% of this book on a typewriter which I love to use because it’s a lot harder to edit.
Has the publishing process taught you lessons you think other writers might value?
Traditional publishing can take years. My agent sold my book to my publisher almost two years ago, which, I have been told that—even by traditional publishing’s standards—is quite a while. Some of that time was spent editing, but for most of it I have been writing Book 2 and working at my day job. I didn’t realise how the passage of that time would make me feel. For about four years, this book was my baby; I took it everywhere with me, was duty-bound to defend it. But, now that I’ve let it go, I feel as if I’m play-acting the person who wrote it.
Everyone will tell you not to read your reviews, but the internet is always there! And you’ve waited for years to see what the world thinks about this story you were dying to tell. Don’t feel too guilty if this is a lesson you’ll have to learn the hard way.
On your website, there is an option to take an Astronaut Test to see if the reader would be capable of embarking on a long space mission like the one in your novel. Both of us failed, but did you pass? Do you think you’d do well on a 23-year mission into space?
Hah! I get so many questions about this. I didn’t make it. I failed and everyone I know failed so for a while I had a suspicion that no one could win. But now a few people have tweeted me to tell me that they have so maybe it’s true that only the best of the best can make it.
I’m certain that I would not be selected for a real mission into space. I like to be comfortable. I can’t say that I’m a risk taker. Plumbing matters a lot to me. In one interview I read an astronaut said that sometimes going to the bathroom can become a ‘hand to hand combat’—I was horrified.
The premise of the novel is that a ‘New Earth’—a habitable planet across space—has been discovered. If you were part of an exploration mission, what things do you think you’d miss most about ‘Old Earth’?
My favourite place to be is in a coffee shop in a Waterstones with two or three free hours in front of me. So I would miss everything about that experience.
Obviously, family. But also, the candy-floss colours of apple blossoms in the spring and the way they scatter like confetti across the asphalt. Going out on a summer’s day at lunchtime in the city where I work, and seeing all the people in suits gathered out on every green space eating lunch out of paper bags as if it’s a music festival but only for an hour or two.
You can find more about Temi via her website. A list of Temi’s live appearances, interviews, and podcast specials—as well as a means of contact—are available on the About page; more information on Do You Dream of Terra-Two?, as well as an except, is available via the About the Book page. Do You Dream of Terra-Two? is published by Simon & Schuster in the United Kingdom and by Saga Press in the United States; the book is available in stores now and can also be purchased on Audible .