Mileva Anastasiadou

What was your favorite book as a child?

The Little Prince by Antoine de Saint-Exupéry. Last year I even found the exact copy I read as a child with my notes on it. It was first assigned to me by my French teacher, and I loved it, but I wasn’t fluent enough in French to appreciate it fully and I asked my parents to buy me a copy in Greek. I realize now that it was a book for kids but also for adults. I think I was drawn to books that made the world feel slightly more mysterious than it was. I even wrote a tiny story last year about what it would be like if the Little Prince grew old and experienced loss, which was published in Milk Candy Review.

What was the original reason or motivation why you started writing creatively?

Writing gave me a place where I could make sense of emotions, memories and experiences by turning them into stories. After a huge loss recently, the first moment I felt a bit better was when I had the chance to sit down and write something about it. Haruki Murakami mentions in 1Q84 that we can bear pain as long as we find meaning in it. You can’t always find meaning but looking for meaning can be enough sometimes. And there is always something magical about realizing that with words you can create a world that didn’t exist before you wrote it. You can bring people back, change the ending, bend time, make the impossible happen. Even when reality is completely beyond your control, on the page you can make a little magic.

What was the most adventurous or thrilling thing you ever did/experienced?

Probably the things that felt most adventurous to me weren’t necessarily the most dangerous ones. I’ve had my share of adventure and danger, but since I wasn’t aware that what I was doing was dangerous, there wasn’t anything thrilling about the experience. Love, for instance, I had no idea how dangerous love is, not just romantic love but any kind of love. I now think love is the greatest adventure, the most dangerous, but also the most fulfilling one. What has always felt more thrilling are moments or periods of time when I stepped outside the life I knew and found myself somewhere completely unfamiliar. Traveling, getting lost, spending nights somewhere unexpected, it all comes down to stepping out of my comfort zone, that kind of thing.

Do you listen to music while reading or writing? Why/why not?

Sometimes I need some kind of background noise to help me focus, but I write mostly in silence. Music, especially music with lyrics, can interfere with my need for hyperfocus or spoil the flow state I need when I write. It depends on my mood, actually, on the theme I write about or the book I read, because sometimes the right kind of music can help induce a flow state, but I prefer silence most of the time.