“It all went by too soon,” said Sara Gruen, a Carleton graduate and author, of her time at the university.
Hailing from London, Ont., Gruen said she knew she wanted to write from the second she knew she could make a career out of it.
Despite being best known as the author of Water for Elephants, a novel that was also made into a film in 2011, her earlier years were focused on her musical career.
She first enrolled in Carleton’s music program before switching to an English major in her third year.
“I was in music because everyone was expecting me to be in music, but really it was reading and writing that I wanted. I was good at it, [and] my parents were musicians so it was important to them,” Gruen said.
Gruen had a strict violin practice schedule: an hour a day from the time she was seven years old. She said she usually completed the obligatory practices in the mornings before school so she could get it out of the way. But soon, she realized she could trick her parents into thinking she was practising by recording herself and replaying it in the mornings instead of practising.
She said her tricks stopped quickly when she was caught at a music lesson with a violin string that had been broken for more than a week.
Despite her many years perfecting the violin, she said she knew it wasn’t what she wanted to pursue.
“It was always writing. It’s one of those things that’s just in my DNA,” she said.
During her time at Carleton, Gruen said she did not spend very much of her time getting involved on campus.
“I was not really the ‘candy striper’ kind of student . . . I was involved with the Paul Menton Centre,” Gruen said.
She was inspired to volunteer with the Paul Menton Centre by her then-roommate, who was visually impaired due to a severe retinal detachment. She said her job was to attend classes and take notes for students who were registered with the centre and could not take their own notes.
“The really terrific thing was that he got his eyesight back, and it was crazy because one day I walked in and he looked right at me. He ended up getting his driver’s license and everything,” Gruen said.
She said some of her fondest memories at Carleton were the times she spent on the ninth floor of the Loeb Building, in the music department.
“There used to be a music lounge for students on the first floor of the music school and we would go hang out there. There were really only a handful of us and so we got really close. And the crazy thing is, I’m [still] in touch with all of them,” Gruen said.
One of the defining moments of Gruen’s time at Carleton, she said, was when she was playing her second year-end concert. She said she had stage fright and she could not make herself unaware of the audience, and had a panic attack.
“So I did the only reasonable thing you can do. I tucked my violin under my arm and ran . . . and I switched to English the very next morning,” Gruen said.
After graduating from Carleton with a degree in English, Gruen went on to be a technical writer in the United States. After gaining some writing experience, she decided to take two years off to write a book.
She said it was the best thing that ever happened to her.
“It was exactly two years and two books. Riding Lessons sold at auction and I’ve been going at it ever since.”
Gruen’s advice to current English students goes like this: if you love fiction writing and you can’t imagine your life without it, you have to get another job to support that love.
“If you want something written, you have to show up to work,” Gruen said.
