By Susan (but mostly by Elizabeth)
In our series of interviewing each other, I was lucky enough to draw Elizabeth, who is by far the funniest one of the bunch (the rest of us are pretty serious. Well, at least compared to E).
Here is our interview! Enjoy!
SP:
SP:
Tell our readers a little about your background and upbringing that brought you to this place of being a writer.
EL:
EL:
I’m one of six kids, and the other five would all tell you I’m “the weird one.” With a family background like that, what else can you possibly do but write?
I also have a terrific memory. Not necessarily for names, but events and images and tiny details about people and things. For instance, I recall precisely the flavor of the carrots I ate at my friend Valentina’s house one day in first grade, and the fact that she had a Shirley Temple doll still in the box that she wasn’t allowed to touch. The exact orange of the sky as my best friend and I watched the sunset as we realized our friendship had run its course, and the blue black it became as we sat unwilling to stand up and walk out into the night of our painful new reality. The hollow feeling replaced by euphoria when my college speech coaches teased me before revealing that I’d “broken” into finals rounds in every event one year at Nationals. The flowery scent of my daughter’s breath when she was nursing. These, and maybe a million more memories, I really think feed both the emotional and episodic requirements of at least this writer.
I feel like my life has been spent in preparation, and now my job is to distill it into words that will entertain and hopefully enlighten others.
SP:
I also have a terrific memory. Not necessarily for names, but events and images and tiny details about people and things. For instance, I recall precisely the flavor of the carrots I ate at my friend Valentina’s house one day in first grade, and the fact that she had a Shirley Temple doll still in the box that she wasn’t allowed to touch. The exact orange of the sky as my best friend and I watched the sunset as we realized our friendship had run its course, and the blue black it became as we sat unwilling to stand up and walk out into the night of our painful new reality. The hollow feeling replaced by euphoria when my college speech coaches teased me before revealing that I’d “broken” into finals rounds in every event one year at Nationals. The flowery scent of my daughter’s breath when she was nursing. These, and maybe a million more memories, I really think feed both the emotional and episodic requirements of at least this writer.
I feel like my life has been spent in preparation, and now my job is to distill it into words that will entertain and hopefully enlighten others.
SP:
What is your primary genre? What in particular drew you to that?
EL:
EL:
I read a lot of women’s fiction, and those stories are primarily what occur to me. Write what you know, I guess, and what I know at this place in my life now is kids and family and spouses and friendships. Not necessarily in that order. But I’m also drawn to YA, since I never really got over high school, I suppose. (Did I ever tell you I went to high school with my husband? Not that I would have been caught dead dating him then, mind you. Our reunions are always interesting, though.) And maybe because my kids are middle-grade age, or maybe because I still haven’t gotten over elementary school either, I have some middle grade ideas as well. I guess, depending on how things go, I might have to employ a pen name or two!
SP:
SP:
What led you to devote yourself to being a writer?
EL:
EL:
I’ve thought of myself as “a writer” and planned to write for years, but never really did until a few years ago. I did start a novel when I turned 29, thinking, “I can still do it before I’m thirty!” but I stopped before I got very far in. (Which is really too bad as it was during the height of chick-lit, and “Diary of a Woman Turning Thirty,” while not terribly original, was certainly genre-friendly.)
When my daughter started preschool in earnest, more than just enough hours to race to the supermarket kid-free, then I thought, well, no more excuses. I began hitting up the Einstein’s across the street from her school at least three mornings a week, refusing to leave until I’d pumped out a section. I was very secretive, too, very cagey. I found out later the other regulars called me “the writer,” so I guess I wasn’t as covert as I thought. It was great training, though it did give me the pesky habit of writing longhand, but I managed to write the bulk of the first draft of my first novel over dollar cups of coffee while working hard to avoid cream cheese consumption.
SP:
When my daughter started preschool in earnest, more than just enough hours to race to the supermarket kid-free, then I thought, well, no more excuses. I began hitting up the Einstein’s across the street from her school at least three mornings a week, refusing to leave until I’d pumped out a section. I was very secretive, too, very cagey. I found out later the other regulars called me “the writer,” so I guess I wasn’t as covert as I thought. It was great training, though it did give me the pesky habit of writing longhand, but I managed to write the bulk of the first draft of my first novel over dollar cups of coffee while working hard to avoid cream cheese consumption.
SP:
When you were a child, what did you want to be when you grew up?
I planned to be an actress, actually. (See my bio for the props from Mrs. Campbell regarding this aspiration.)
In third grade, I rocked the stage at my school in the role of the cobbler (that’s right, I got the lead role even though it was a male part!), and in fourth grade, after being mocked for having the nerve to audition for one of the narrator roles in Let George Do It, our bicentennial program, the kidding stopped when I got the role along with three sixth graders. (One was my sister, who probably wasn’t thrilled to share the stage with pesky me.)
And then in sixth, I became a playwright-performer with my stand-out role in the very original world premiere of Snow Cool and the Seven Twerps. I played Dum Dum. To this day, I’m not sure there’s ever been a greater cacophony of laughter in that multi-purpose room than the day Dum Dum gasped upon discovering the apparently dead body of Snow Cool. We’re talking elementary school Oscar-caliber stuff. (In the interest of full disclosure, I must inform our readers that I had three co-writers, so I can’t take sole credit for that outstanding script, though I’m pretty sure I was responsible for the very hilarious Twerp names of Bratty and Lazy. Not to mention King Kool, the fabulous hero of the story, who was played by the most popular boy in sixth grade, whose name I do in fact remember but will not disclose as it’s the age of Google and I don’t want to get sued. He was totally cool though. Back in second grade, no one rocked those sweat bands on the wrists the way he did. Plus, he was a super fast runner. Totally cool.)
I also had an imaginary correspondence with one of the stars of Eight Is Enough; my friend and I suggested a story line in which Susan turned out to be adopted, and we (my friend had flaming red hair, and I was sort of white-skinned and round-cheeked) were her biological little sisters. Sadly, our letter must have been lost in the mail, or I would no doubt be married to (and divorced from) Willie Ames by now.
SP:
I planned to be an actress, actually. (See my bio for the props from Mrs. Campbell regarding this aspiration.)
In third grade, I rocked the stage at my school in the role of the cobbler (that’s right, I got the lead role even though it was a male part!), and in fourth grade, after being mocked for having the nerve to audition for one of the narrator roles in Let George Do It, our bicentennial program, the kidding stopped when I got the role along with three sixth graders. (One was my sister, who probably wasn’t thrilled to share the stage with pesky me.)
And then in sixth, I became a playwright-performer with my stand-out role in the very original world premiere of Snow Cool and the Seven Twerps. I played Dum Dum. To this day, I’m not sure there’s ever been a greater cacophony of laughter in that multi-purpose room than the day Dum Dum gasped upon discovering the apparently dead body of Snow Cool. We’re talking elementary school Oscar-caliber stuff. (In the interest of full disclosure, I must inform our readers that I had three co-writers, so I can’t take sole credit for that outstanding script, though I’m pretty sure I was responsible for the very hilarious Twerp names of Bratty and Lazy. Not to mention King Kool, the fabulous hero of the story, who was played by the most popular boy in sixth grade, whose name I do in fact remember but will not disclose as it’s the age of Google and I don’t want to get sued. He was totally cool though. Back in second grade, no one rocked those sweat bands on the wrists the way he did. Plus, he was a super fast runner. Totally cool.)
I also had an imaginary correspondence with one of the stars of Eight Is Enough; my friend and I suggested a story line in which Susan turned out to be adopted, and we (my friend had flaming red hair, and I was sort of white-skinned and round-cheeked) were her biological little sisters. Sadly, our letter must have been lost in the mail, or I would no doubt be married to (and divorced from) Willie Ames by now.
SP:
What are your dreams for you writing, or rather, where do you see yourself and your work in 5 and 10 years?
EL:
EL:
Obviously I hope to be published by 2015, hopefully on deadline for my fourth or fifth book. While I don’t count on J.K. Rowling success (duh), I would like to emulate the career of someone like Elizabeth Berg or Anne Tyler by the time we roll into the third decade of the century. By which I don’t necessarily mean their acclaim, as both are such gifted storytellers and word crafters, but their softly building a great backlist of wonderful novels, one after another after another. That would be fantastic.
SP:
SP:
Tell us about your current work in progress.
EL:
EL:
I’ve got about fifty thousand words or so into a story about two sisters whose lives sort of fall apart just as they receive news of the tragic death of their childhood babysitter. The event—and the woman’s selfless heroism—galvanize them both to examine their lives and choices and take new responsibility for their happiness.
SP:
SP:
What drew you to choose this particular topic?
You know, I’ve been working on this story for a while (kind of too long, but don’t tell anyone that), and I really don’t remember what spurred me. I have some memories from my own childhood about some babysitters, and I’ve lifted a few famous family stories for the book, but none of the characters are based on anyone real in my life, past or present. I guess it’s based more on the memories of emotion, and my wondering how I would react if I were to get the kind of news my characters do.
SP:
You know, I’ve been working on this story for a while (kind of too long, but don’t tell anyone that), and I really don’t remember what spurred me. I have some memories from my own childhood about some babysitters, and I’ve lifted a few famous family stories for the book, but none of the characters are based on anyone real in my life, past or present. I guess it’s based more on the memories of emotion, and my wondering how I would react if I were to get the kind of news my characters do.
SP:
What do you think it takes for a "regular" writer to become a "successful" writer?
EL:
EL:
It’s both my hope and my fear that it’s tenacity and diligence. Both of which are not my strongest suits, but both of which I have worked mightily to improve.
SP:
If you could change one thing about your writing habits, what would it be?
EL:
EL:
Did you not just hear what I said about tenacity and diligence?
SP:
SP:
What writer do you admire most, or desire to emulate?
EL:
EL:
In addition to the novelists I mentioned a little earlier, I would love to have a career trajectory like Barbara Kingsolver. Her masterpiece—and I mean that absolutely, in its true sense—The Poisonwood Bible, was my introduction to her, and it absolutely blew me away. As soon as I finished, I rushed off to find more of her work, and when I read The Bean Trees and some of her other earlier books, I was so impressed with her growth as a writer. The early stuff was really good, too, but what was really wonderful and hopeful to me was that, good as it was, there wasn’t necessarily any particular indication that she’d go on to produce something so incredible as The Poisonwood Bible. That is how I’d like my writing career to go, I thought then (this was just a couple of years ago). Publish some good stuff, keep learning, and then one day, bring out the biggest gun. I actually already have an idea of a book I really want to write that is a huge idea, but I don’t quite feel ready to write it yet. And I don’t want to mess it up before I’m ready, so I’m keeping it on the back burner for now.
SP:
SP:
Is there anything else you'd like to tell our readers about you?
EL:
EL:
I really like ice cream entirely too much. Also, I think about food in general a disproportionate amount of time. That’s probably not what you meant, though.
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