Rocío Carmona is a writer, editor and singer, a declared fan of romantic literature. She is the author of great hits such as The Grammar of Love and Hannah's Heart. She has just published her latest book, The Concert of the Birds (Grijalbo), which has been a complete challenge for her, since she had always considered herself a map writer, who had a clear beginning and an end to the story. But, her latest novel expresses that it has been somewhat more difficult and that there were days when she did not know what was going to happen in the plot. Based on Ada's experience, a victim of hate on social networks, Rocío talks to us about friendship as a central theme and, specifically, "female friendship." Furthermore, "there is a whole vindication of the artistic as a fundamental part of any person's life."
What inspired you to write The Concert of the Birds? How did the central idea of the story come about?
Well, I started to fall in love with birds through my daughter who, when she was quite young, five or six years old, began to develop a lot of interest in birds and asked me to buy her guides. She would notice them and then she would begin to name them. For me, naming things has been important since I was very little, because I think that when you name things you immediately take better care of them, because you pay more attention to them, you know, you begin to give them certain qualities. And, in my case, I assimilate attention with love, where I put my attention is where I love, right? Anyway, through my daughter I began to pay attention to birds and name them. So, this has been something that has been coming to me for a few years.
How did you start writing this book?
The story of how I started this book is a bit long, I'll try to summarize it, because it didn't start like all my other novels. With this novel, let's say, I have inaugurated a new way of writing for me. Normally, with my other novels, there was always a trigger through which I imagined a story from beginning to end. So, I had always called myself a map writer.
They say there are compass writers and there are map writers. I am a map. Because I visualized the map, where the beginning was, where the main milestones of the story were and, from there, there could be changes and surprises, but, in general, everything was very planned. With this story it was not like that. I was writing a novel, actually, that wasn't making any progress and that I didn't feel very comfortable with. I was writing it, as always, with my map. And, due to life circumstances, it happened to me a bit like Ada, the protagonist, not in her story, but I did find myself, suddenly, in a special moment in my life, in a hostel, in Montseny, completely alone.
So, absolutely nothing happened that night, but it did happen that my imagination was triggered and I began to imagine what would happen if someone left me a note that I put under my door, without having any idea why that image came to mind. The days went by, the weeks went by and that scene, which was not a story in this case, was a simple scene that I didn't know where it came from, kept appearing. And then I decided to start writing from there, without having any idea what the story I was going to write would be. It is a bit of the story of the beginning and how I have now become a compass writer, who simply tries to connect with something that I don't really know where it comes from. And I directed my compass towards that north and, from there, I sat down to write without really knowing where I would end up, but in the end, somehow, the story continued and that is how it has been.
And what about the result? Have you felt comfortable with this new way of writing?
It has taken me a lot to adapt. For me it has been a great personal and professional challenge as a writer, especially because of confidence. Because, of course, by completely changing the method, until now I sat down one day in the morning to write a certain chapter and I knew what was going to happen in this chapter, not in this way. I would write a chapter on a Sunday night and the next day I didn't know what I was going to write or what was going to happen. There was always the doubt, especially until page one hundred, which for me is like an interesting threshold in which the story already seems to take on a life of its own. But up to that point it was like a little... Oh, let's see if I don't know how to continue because I don't know what's happening, I don't know who shows up now, I don't know what's going to happen. But in some way it has served me a lot, first personally to connect with a confidence in life that for me was interesting to live in a different way and then professionally because I have been able to experience that being an artist is another point of view. Less mental and much more connected to another mysterious and magical thing that we don't really know where it comes from.
The protagonist of the novel, Ada, suffers drastic changes due to the hate campaign on social networks. Why did you write about cyberbullying?
Well look, now it would look great if I told you that it was for something specific, but really, as I told you a moment ago, the truth is that while I was doing it I had no idea why I was writing about this. Of course, once the work is done and people start reading it and start giving comments, experiences and sensations, sometimes what happens is that you do realize why you did it. In this case, I am still not very clear why, but I believe that these types of situations are an injustice, seeing how a person's image, in these times, through social networks, can be tarnished very easily by negative comments. I, who am a particularly sensitive person, think I connect with that feeling that the protagonist could have of absolute injustice. I also write these things because, as I have a daughter and three teenage stepchildren, the issue of social networks and how all this interferes with our lives and what effects it has, I am especially attentive to this.
Why does the book's protagonist, Ada, believe that after always having been an urban woman, the best thing she could do was disconnect from everything and go to the mountains?
Here comes something that is fundamental in this novel, which is the role of nature. She, instinctively, a little like I started writing this novel, because there are many parallels between the process that Ada is experiencing and the one that I was experiencing when changing my way of writing. In a very intuitive way, without thinking about what she is doing, she goes to a place outside the city. When we are surrounded by a lot of chaos, a lot of inputs, noise... first I think it is very important to find silence. We can find silence inside, but if we go to a place where there is also physical silence and we are in nature, it is much easier to connect with an essential part of the person. For me, the fact that it is nature is very important, now we are in a moment in which we pay more and more attention, but I think that we live with the idea that we are not nature. We still have the idea that nature is a thing that we go to, but we forget that we are part of nature, we are nature.
There are many stories of people who have had similar things happen to them, there is a natural instinct to return to a space to which we belong, to find ourselves, to reconnect with something very essential in the person. Ada finds herself in a situation in which she does not have much family support. She finds herself a little alone in the face of danger. She is not being seen very much or understood very much. I think that many times we talk very often about taking care of nature, and this is super necessary and very beautiful and gives us a lot of satisfaction, but I think there is also a return movement that we do not realize. So it is a bit of the movement that Ada, intuitively, seeks and ends up finding in this nature.
What was the biggest challenge you faced in writing Concert of the Birds? What would you highlight about the creation process?
For me it has been that. It has been trusting my ability to create in a different way, in a much more intuitive way, connected to something more mysterious, much less from the mind, more from the soul, more from the heart and letting myself be guided. It has been like a process of surrendering in confidence to the fact that it is possible to do this in another way. This for me has been very nice, very interesting. I think it has given rise to a novel that, in reality, is speaking to you about many parts of me in a much more unconscious way than at other times. When writing it I didn't realize it and when I finished it I did realize that it is a novel that talks a lot about other selves of mine that are in other characters. We could say like in dreams, that sometimes therapists tell you that dreams are so we have to interpret them thinking that we are all the characters in the dream.
The challenge for me has really been that, I have experienced the same challenge that Ada has experienced, she in this case is inaugurating herself as an artist, as a creator. Of course, by completely changing the method of doing it with this novel, in a way I felt like I was starting over. So it's been like a total, daily questioning of every time I sat in front of the computer to write and say: "I'm not capable of doing this, I can't do this, I'm not going to be able to." A bit like her, right? So this has been the biggest challenge and I still marvel at how I have been able to do it, if every day I have had to live the same internal dialogue with myself of saying: "Well, okay, maybe I won't be able to do it, but I'm going to try to write one more chapter."
Do you feel identified with the protagonist?
Yes, there I feel identified with some parts of Ada, but I also feel identified with Violeta, I feel identified with Salvador as well and with the artist grandmother... There are many parts of me that I realize are there as if they were the characters in a dream who are actually all me.
What is your favorite part of the book or Ada's story?
Oh, there are so many. I really like a part where a dream is described in which she is walking through the forest and for me it is a very symbolic part. I also like a lot of small moments, which other readers might expect to be more significant ones. But for me it is very interesting when she goes to Violeta's house and finds herself in a creative environment, because there is a visual artist there where these people start painting and she is faced again with what was happening to me. . I don't know how to paint, I do this very badly. And the artist who acts here as a kind of spiritual father tells him, there is no good or evil in art, what it is about is creating and pouring on the paper or on the canvas, on whatever, what one has inside. And that is unique, inimitable and that only if you do it honestly has great value. And in the end the public decides the artistic value it has, but personally it has a lot of value.
And then I really like the letters he exchanges with Olaya, because for me it was very important to be able to deal with the topic of female friendship in a novel. I have written a lot about love, about romantic stories and I had the idea, from experiences I have lived and people around me, that very little is said, there is a lot of talk about breakups and they say it in one of the breakup letters. In fact, my previous novel was called What Happened When You Broke My Heart and it's about exactly this. And, of course, it was very important for me to be able to talk about friendship as a central theme and female friendship specifically as a central theme of the novel. In the part of Ada's letters with her friend, it is highlighted how important general friendship relationships are, but female friendship, in this case, for me this was very important and they are letters that I really like.
Is the feedback you are receiving from readers what you expected?
The truth is that I did not expect to receive such nice feedback. It has helped me a lot to understand what I was telling you, you write more when you write from an intuitive place and you don't know what you are writing about. Look, in the end what I like most about what they are telling me is a very beautiful thing and that is that people are experiencing this novel as a refuge, a kind place, a place to go when the outside is ugly, sad ...when things aren't great out there. People are living it like, oh man, there is a basic kindness in this place. That feels warm as a refuge. So I can realize that I have written this novel to create that for myself without realizing it, because I was needing it. And it's super nice to see how other people realize that and that this refuge that I have created for myself turns out to have more room and that we can all fit there. The truth is that I am super grateful.
What is the message you want your readers to receive after reading the novel?
Well, I don't know, I didn't want to deliver a specific message. What I like is that everyone finds in the novel what they need at that moment. So, as I say, there are people who are finding a kind refuge. There are people who are beginning to consider that perhaps they could write or do something artistic, because there is a demand for the artistic as a fundamental part of the life of any person, regardless of age, origin or training. Other people who may be going through a bad time with a friend, well, they can find an echo there and say, oh man, no one talks about this and here it is being talked about and this is what I feel. I believe that art has that quality and it is that there is no good vision or message either in a painting or in a novel, but rather each person projects there what they need to see at that moment and maybe it will come out within a year or so. two and find something else. What I would like as an objective, as a desire, is that people are entertained and really find that refuge there that they say they are finding.
If you could choose to be a bird, which one would you be? Because?
I know that there are much more beautiful birds, but I have a special affection for the blackbird, which is a bird that has a lot of prominence in this novel. I don't know much about these things about spiritual animals, but I think the blackbird has something with me because when I was writing the novel I had all these moments of doubt that sometimes led me to paralysis and spending two or three weeks without daring to sit down because I was afraid that I wouldn't be able to do it. And a blackbird always appeared there, a male blackbird, the black one. He appeared to me among the trees in the place where I was living before, Santa Maria de Palautordera, and was jumping around the bush where I had parked the car. It's a bird that makes me smile every time I see it because it's like... it reminds me a little of the purpose, right? Hey, keep going, let it come, let it go, and it seems like a beautiful bird to me.
Do you think the characters in your last two novels, Mia and Ada, would be friends if they met? Do they have their points in common?
Look, I hadn't thought about it, but I think so, that they have points in common. They are focused on different things, but they are both wounded people. They have different ages, but they are relatively young girls, one is in her 30s and the other in her 20s, at very significant moments in their lives of change of stage, moments in which life asks them for a change because the character they were using until That moment no longer serves them. So yes, I think they could sit down and talk about those characters that they have dropped and what the new ones that the two of them are building are like.
Will there be a third 'friend' who is the protagonist of your next book? Will it also be about a vital change?
This is an exclusive. Okay, I can move forward a little. What I can explain is that the next one will be a completely different novel. I am entering a very new territory for me that will pose another great challenge and it will be a novel set in Andalusia. This is where my roots are. I was born here, but my family comes from Andalusia, and it will be a novel in which that area will be present. I can't say more, because there's still a lot left. I'm just starting the research, so it will come.
Are you targeting a female audience or would it be outdated today to make this type of distinction?
I don't. That is to say, as an intention, as a writer, I am not thinking that I should be read exclusively by women. And yes, I think it's good that we leave these labels of women's literature, literature for women, behind. Because in the end we are all creators, we drink from the same source. And it is clear that our life experiences have an influence on what we create, but I don't think this is something that should define what we do as a genre, because I don't think it helps much either.
