Interview: Annette Gilson

Writer Annette Gilson introduced herself to me last year when she was doing promotions among lit-bloggers for her first novel, New Light. Now she's answered some of my questions about her writing life, the rhythms and fears and challenges.

I particularly liked what she said about being excited to come back to fiction after an intense bout of teaching and reviewing. I'm hoping that same effect will apply to me now that I'm returning to my novel after a parenting and working interlude.

My thanks to Annette for allowing us a peek into her process. Check out An Interview with Annette Gilson.

Interview: Justine Larbalestier

You've got to admire the hubris of a post titled how to write a novel. Except that Justine Larbalestier has a few such novels under her belt and, what's more, her instructions are concrete, useful and witty, and give the reader a voyeuristic peek at her process.

[Larbalestier is pronounced lar-bal-est-ee-air according to her faq, and that mellifluous name rolled around in my head for weeks after I read the first two novels of her YA trilogy, Magic or Madness and Magic Lessons. I wait impatiently for the library to come through with the third installment, Magic's Child.]

Justine Larbalestier (see, isn't that an earworm?) lives in Australia with her husband and fellow writer Scott Westerfeld, although she also sojourns in New York City and San Miguel de Allende (yes, I'm jealous).

Jennifer Laughran of Books Inc recently did an interview with Justine, and I'm not sure which one of them had more fun. The story of how Justine became a full-time writer is more cautionary than exemplar:

But back when I was trying to figure out what to do for a living, I didn't fancy my chances, so I studied and became an academic. That way I could pay the rent and, you know, eat while I wrote on the side. It's always a good idea to have more than one way to earn money so that if one doesn't work out you can try something else. I also trained to be a massage therapist. (Didn't like it at all.)

I quit to become a freelance writer before I sold anything. It was terrifying and completely unwise. I don't recommend it to anyone. But within six months of going freelance I sold the MAGIC OR MADNESS trilogy. Phew, eh?

That was in 2003. Sounds magical and instantaneous, doesn't it? But I'd been writing for years and years and years before that. I have gazillions of short stories that never sold. And the novel I started in 1988 and finished in 1999 still hasn't sold either.

If there isn't enough of Justine's juicy voice in that interview, you can also check out Little Willow for the story of how she and Scott met and Bookslut for a discussion of her non-fiction books on science fiction and fantasy.

Profile: Stanley Kunitz

ELIZABETH FARNSWORTH: You said, actually, once, that you felt you were predestined to become a poet. What do you mean by that?

STANELY KUNITZ: My family, fortunately, had an extensive library, and that was a rare phenomenon in those days. One of the prized volumes in that library was an unabridged dictionary. And I used to sit in that green Morris chair and open the heavy dictionary on my lap, and find a new word every day. It was a big word, a word like "eleemosynary" or "phantasmagoria" -- some word that, on the tongue, sounded great to me, and I would go out into the fields and I would shout those words, because it was so important that they sounded so great to me. And then eventually I began incorporating them into verses, into poems. But certainly my thought in the ... in the beginning was that there was so much joy playing with language that I couldn't consider living without it. --from a PBS interview

My husband Shawn and I have been devotees of US poet laureate Stanley Kunitz ever since we found his moving work "The Layers" several years ago. We were saddened to hear of his death this past May, at the advanced age of 100. From all accounts, he was a devoted poet and a generous mentor and editor.

Paul Nemser remembers how Kunitz remade his world. A poet and translator who is a partner at the Boston law firm Goodwin Procter, he studied with Kunitz at Columbia in the early 1970s. "People always ask how I got to be a lawyer," Nemser said yesterday. The answer is: He trusted Stanley Kunitz.

As an eager but debt-burdened young poet supporting himself as a bookstore clerk, Nemser sought out his teacher one day, explained his situation and asked what he should do. Kunitz "looked up into the sky," Nemser recalled, then looked down and said, "the law." He added, "You love poetry so much that you will never give it up."

Three decades of law and poetry, for Nemser, have proved him correct. --from the Washington Post

For our tenth anniversary, Shawn recited "Touch Me" and had us both in tears. (If you go to The Writer's Almanac and scroll down to Friday, July 29, 2005, you can hear Garrison Keillor read "Touch Me" in honour of Kunitz's hundredth birthday.)

His great breakthrough as a writer, he thought, came when his mother and sisters had all died, and he said, "The disappearance of my family liberated me. It gave me a sense that I was the only survivor and if the experiences of my life ... were to be told, it was within my power to do so." --from the Writer's Almanac

You'll find a profile of Kunitz and links to more poems and interviews at the Academy of American Poets.

[Inspiration for this entry came from my recent discovery of Mary Oliver's poem called "Stanley Kunitz". How good to be assured that art comes, not by magic, but by patient work on one's knees.]

Interview: Alison Gresik

You've been getting bits and pieces of my writing story in the entries here; now you can read a longer version in this interview published in Stonework, a journal of Houghton College. The interview took place in March 2005, when I participated in their writing festival. My thanks to the interviewer, Lori Huth, and to the publisher of Stonework, Jack Leax.

For the next year, I just really focused on taking care of myself. Extravagant care, I called it. I made sure that I had time to rest, and that I was not putting up with so many expectations about meeting the needs of others and looking after everyone else before myself. I was very gentle with myself, and learned what I needed to be healthy. Part of that was realizing if I wasn’t writing, everyone else was out of whack. I really believe that writing is one of my core purposes for being on this earth. I had to learn to say no to others so that I could spend the time that I needed to writing. I’m still learning that balance. I still get into trouble sometimes by over committing myself, so it’s always a struggle to find that balance.

Stonework also published a story of mine that originally appeared in Descant, called "Broken Water."

Interview: Elizabeth Merrick

On days when I wonder whether I'll make it as a writer (whatever that means), I'm inspired to read about folks like Elizabeth Merrick, who just forge their own way, without waiting for anyone to come and hand it to them.

When agents told Merrick that her first novel, Girly wasn't commercial enough to publish, she created a publishing company and started marketing the book herself. She holds workshops for writers (started in her living room), and runs a reading series called Grace, named after her grandmother. This girl is a real go-getter.

I got this apartment that was a little bigger and I couldn’t quite afford it and my friend Nathalie said, you should teach ballet classes in this enormous living room! And I got sort of desperate and worn out from copyediting so I ended up, what the hell, starting writing classes by advertising on Craigslist. Forget Jesus—Craigslist is magic. Now it’s mostly word of mouth, and the classes are generally full each round, and I’ve moved the intro course into a public classroom space. The most amazing beings show up in my living room every week—it’s such a huge gift. I have this thriving, not-snobby, passionate, fun, hilarious, hard-working, tight-knit literary community bringing beauty into the world. In my house, every week! It didn’t exist before for me, really—I was a bit sad not to have a literary community, but nothing out there appealed—I didn’t quite have one even in grad school. Now there’s this whole crew making such gorgeous books all around me—it is an honor to be involved with my students. It’s the thing in my life I feel luckiest about in addition to my family. I look back and I see: my god, I would have been so grouchy if I had gotten some big late-nineties book advance and hidden away protecting my writing time a few more years. The way things played out, this lovely community was born. My students inspire me and crack me up every single week and their books are going to floor you, just wait.

Gothamist has a good juicy interview with Merrick (where I got that quotation), and there's another one on Gina Frangello's Other Voices Blog.

Here's to finding your own "thriving, not-snobby, passionate, fun, hilarious, hard-working, tight-knit literary community." Sounds heavenly.

Profile: Stephanie Bose

I ran across this blog by Stephanie Bose a few months ago. I love that she's clearly stated her goals right there on the home page:

The dream: to be a published writer. The challenge: to do it by the age of 40 (4 years to go!). The vow: To never give up, even if 40 comes and goes.

Stephanie works full-time in media/communications, and she's getting married in a few months, yet she's still cranking out the word count.

Back in February she heard back from an editor who read a partial manuscript she submitted and wanted to see the full. So she wrote like crazy to edit and finish up the book.

Now she's celebrating the two-year anniversary of starting to write seriously for publication, and she posted some great tips on what she's learned.

Above all, revel in the time you have to sit and create new worlds. How many people say they want to write a book but never do? Millions. How many people actually do it? About 3%. How many write THE END? About 1%. And I'm in that 1%. How great is that??!!!

I love Stephanie's enthusiasm and her dedication. I have no doubt that dream of hers will come true.

Interview: Margaret Atwood

Something light for a Friday ...

This Maisonneuve interview with Margaret Atwood is a memorable one. I love the way she turns things around and starts giving the interviewer advice about his career, and how to keep from getting sick on book tours.

[Edited to add: When I originally read this interview some months back, the entire article was available at Maisonneuve's website for free. Now it's only available to subscribers there. The link I've provided takes you to KeepMedia, where you can read the article for a dollar. I think it's worth it, but if you don't have any spare change today, you could substitute this thread at Metafilter, which includes some choice quotes from the interview, and the entire text of Jan Wong's lunch interview with Atwood.

Maud Newton also has a good summary and some quotations.]

Profile: Jim Munroe

I recently stumbled on novelist Jim Munroe's DIY publishing empire, No Media Kings. After a brief foray into traditional publishing with his first book from HaperCollins, Flyboy Action Figure Comes With Gasmask, Munroe found he could make more doing the publishing, promotion, and sales himself. Talented guy.

Metro Toronto has a great introductory profile on Munroe, which gives you a quick rundown on his history. Then dig around No Media Kings to read about how he wrote his first novel in 21 weeks (you can now download the e-book version for free), what it was like to publish with HarperCollins, and a budget breakdown of his revenue and expenses for his self-published novel Angry Young Spaceman.

What I find really inspiring about Munroe's story is how he questioned the conventional wisdom about how authors are supposed to make money, and capitalized on his own experience in zine publishing and self-promotion to find new ways to support himself by writing.