Emmyenglish

The double life of Emmy Morén (Rabén&Sjögren 2010)

Emmy Morén is 15 years old and a bored high school student living outside Stockholm. Her parents have recently been divorced, and she lives with her big sister who´s an ultrafeminst and her father who´s mostly a martyr. Emmy´s mother has escaped the family ”to find herself” – in Gothenburg, at the other side of the country. She has left a scattered family behind which on the good days eats micro food, and the bad days directly out of the can with plastic knifes and forks.

In her huge boredom Emmy googles her name and finds a 29-years old actress with the same name. They start writing to eachother. Can you have an ”alibi-boyfriend” while lacking a real one? wonders the young Emmy Morén. Can you be unfailthful to get rid of someone completely? wonders the older Emmy Morén. But soon they both start to wonder: Can you write to the becoming version of yourself?

Behind the scenes – the writing process

The idea came to me while I was parking my car. That exact amount of time it takes to park the car, back and forth through the snow, the idea to the youth novel came in a very clear form. A 15-year old girl ”googles” her name on the internet and finds a 29-year old actress by the same name: Emmy Morén. They start e-mailing to one another. Very soon it becomes clear that while the young girl stands for the ideals and theory – how life should be, what is true, right and honest – the woman stands for reality and the practise – the compromises we need to make in life, how memories from our childhood comes back to haunt us. They both realise: it is like meeting the older/yonger version of yourself, like writing to yourself. (The novel also first hade the working title: ”Letters to myself”.) And the young girl is by no means the one with the most troublesome life.

Often an idea comes like that: clear and vivid and only in a few seconds, sometimes it is even hard to to quickly catch the strong images and sentences until it is all gone! The good ideas are always simple and straight-forward. The more complicated I make them, the more I loose track and interest and there is no ”need” to write them. An idea has to almost burn in your mind, in order to have the energy to write over 200 pages and edit them for up to three years… Although my ideas come suddenly and unexpected, I have often thought about them in the back of my head for years. It just feels like they are coming suddenly – I believe the unconsciousness is letting it ”bubble” to the surface at a certain time. I had been wanting to write a youth novel for years, after almost 20 years of novels and children´s books. But it just seemed too hard, the teenage readers sees through anything that is ”phony” and their view on life is often very rightous. No idea of mine seemed clear enough. Not until I parked the car! There they were: the two Emmy Moréns – or are they only one? – and I liked them instantly…