I conducted my interview today with the author of my choice, a woman who is a published writer and an academic at a local university. As many writers can be, she was somewhat difficult to get talking, although a bit surprising since she is a professor too. There was also a big hiccup because I couldn't get a digital recorder as I had thought I was going to be able to do in order to tape our conversation. Our conversation took about an hour and a half, with me scribbling furiously since I couldn't record the interview. Sure wish I knew shorthand. Que será será.
1. When did you start to write, seriously?
2. How would you characterize yourself as a writer? Your style,
your tone, specifically?
3. Through reading your books, I got the feeling that you got away
from writing and academia for a long time while you worked on
the railroad, although I'm sure that it still shaped who you were
a working class person—your world view, etc. How did you get
back into writing again after having been distanced from it in
many ways during your years on the rails?
4. You mention reading poetry as a sort of guiding force,
particularly Wallace Stevens. What other writers or writing
shaped you as a person and as a writer?
5. Wallace Stevens writes, "The imagination loses vitality as it ceases to adhere to what is real. When it adheres to the unreal . . . its first effect may be extraordinary, that effect is the maximum effect that it will ever have." Does he express here what ultimately drives you to write non-fiction.
6. How did you first find an agent or a publisher? How difficult was
that, and what were some of the responses that you first got
when you submitted your work?
7. How do you balance the truths in your autobiographical writing
and your relationships with people whom you depict? What kind
of consideration do you take into account when writing about
some very personal details involving the people in your life?
8. What has been their reaction?
9. How do you want others to think of your writing? And how do
you think other might describe your writing? Does that please
you?
10. Your writing exudes a certain kind of critique of modern
American culture. What issues in American society do your feel
your work bring attention to?
11. What kind of response do you want to elicit through your
writing? From others, and from yourself, perhaps, too?
12. Autobiographical or memoir writing in many respects can
be more difficult because what you may find interesting and
intriguing, may sound like whining selfindulgence to others.
How do you decide what life events or epiphanies you can build
some kind of "arc" around, and which ones may be less
attractive to readers—despite the fact that they be significant to
you?
13. You writing, by the nature of its genre is very personal.
How does "developing an authorial voice" in your writing differ
from your own personal voice. Or does it?
14. In your life you've made decisions that opened you up to
a larger community of people and experiences. What has that
done for you as a person and a writer?
15. Plot, characterization, setting, voice, tone: all these things
are used to describe writing and literature in general—but which
of these qualities do you feel is most imperative in bringing
writing to life?
16. You say in your book that you've always felt like you've
violated the "membership rules" of the communities around you.
You say, "not money, status, or happiness" is what you seek.How has writing helped your in your quest to find some
kind of niche?
17. You write a good bit about your partying, drug use,
alcohol use, and sexual preferences and experiences: Do you
feel that these unorthodox experiences and "altered states" of
mind contributed to your ability to "see beyond" the norm, as so
many authors have implied it does?
18. Self-abuse seems to be a thread that runs through some
of your writing, from wearing the hat with the silver wings that
calls attention to you in the rail yards and to the way you manage
your love life and substance abuse. What surprised you most
about yourself as your wrote about the search to find a sense
of place? or to be "a part of it all" (7) as you say in your
memoir?
19. How has your sobriety changed the way you approach
writing? Or has it?
20. On page 111 in the memoir, you write that you wanted to
become your own story, to find out who was the hero of your
own life. What was it that drove you to set your "hero's journey"
into motion? Is this part of that inner drive that some people are
born with—a need to search for and express some force of life?
21. When you look back on "your story," how did you
approach writing about it? What is your working method or
routine like? Describe it.
22. Can you read this passage on page 166? That is
beautiful, poetic language—is that kind of writing what became
your sober "high," because it's really heady, gorgeous prose.
23. Another theme that shows up in your writing is this idea of
"pulling yourself up by your bootstraps" (individualism) vs. the
uniting power of community. You write some in Railroad Noir
about the kind of entitlement and materialism that seem to
possess American youth today. How has that materialist
sentiment in society —and the dependence on social
technology to express oneself —changed the way that people
read and write today? Good thing or bad thing?
24. You write, back in your academic days that a literate
society was assumed, and after a few years as a writing teacher you "figured
out" how to these, shall I say, subliterate youth. How DO
you teach them?
25. On page 245, the last page of your memoir, Ellen, the
boatman says to you, "when you've come to the end of the trail, it
means you've lost it somewhere" . . . still feel this way? what
does that mean to you now?
1. When did you start to write, seriously?
2. How would you characterize yourself as a writer? Your style,
your tone, specifically?
3. Through reading your books, I got the feeling that you got away
from writing and academia for a long time while you worked on
the railroad, although I'm sure that it still shaped who you were
a working class person—your world view, etc. How did you get
back into writing again after having been distanced from it in
many ways during your years on the rails?
4. You mention reading poetry as a sort of guiding force,
particularly Wallace Stevens. What other writers or writing
shaped you as a person and as a writer?
5. Wallace Stevens writes, "The imagination loses vitality as it ceases to adhere to what is real. When it adheres to the unreal . . . its first effect may be extraordinary, that effect is the maximum effect that it will ever have." Does he express here what ultimately drives you to write non-fiction.
6. How did you first find an agent or a publisher? How difficult was
that, and what were some of the responses that you first got
when you submitted your work?
7. How do you balance the truths in your autobiographical writing
and your relationships with people whom you depict? What kind
of consideration do you take into account when writing about
some very personal details involving the people in your life?
8. What has been their reaction?
9. How do you want others to think of your writing? And how do
you think other might describe your writing? Does that please
you?
10. Your writing exudes a certain kind of critique of modern
American culture. What issues in American society do your feel
your work bring attention to?
11. What kind of response do you want to elicit through your
writing? From others, and from yourself, perhaps, too?
12. Autobiographical or memoir writing in many respects can
be more difficult because what you may find interesting and
intriguing, may sound like whining selfindulgence to others.
How do you decide what life events or epiphanies you can build
some kind of "arc" around, and which ones may be less
attractive to readers—despite the fact that they be significant to
you?
13. You writing, by the nature of its genre is very personal.
How does "developing an authorial voice" in your writing differ
from your own personal voice. Or does it?
14. In your life you've made decisions that opened you up to
a larger community of people and experiences. What has that
done for you as a person and a writer?
15. Plot, characterization, setting, voice, tone: all these things
are used to describe writing and literature in general—but which
of these qualities do you feel is most imperative in bringing
writing to life?
16. You say in your book that you've always felt like you've
violated the "membership rules" of the communities around you.
You say, "not money, status, or happiness" is what you seek.How has writing helped your in your quest to find some
kind of niche?
17. You write a good bit about your partying, drug use,
alcohol use, and sexual preferences and experiences: Do you
feel that these unorthodox experiences and "altered states" of
mind contributed to your ability to "see beyond" the norm, as so
many authors have implied it does?
18. Self-abuse seems to be a thread that runs through some
of your writing, from wearing the hat with the silver wings that
calls attention to you in the rail yards and to the way you manage
your love life and substance abuse. What surprised you most
about yourself as your wrote about the search to find a sense
of place? or to be "a part of it all" (7) as you say in your
memoir?
19. How has your sobriety changed the way you approach
writing? Or has it?
20. On page 111 in the memoir, you write that you wanted to
become your own story, to find out who was the hero of your
own life. What was it that drove you to set your "hero's journey"
into motion? Is this part of that inner drive that some people are
born with—a need to search for and express some force of life?
21. When you look back on "your story," how did you
approach writing about it? What is your working method or
routine like? Describe it.
22. Can you read this passage on page 166? That is
beautiful, poetic language—is that kind of writing what became
your sober "high," because it's really heady, gorgeous prose.
23. Another theme that shows up in your writing is this idea of
"pulling yourself up by your bootstraps" (individualism) vs. the
uniting power of community. You write some in Railroad Noir
about the kind of entitlement and materialism that seem to
possess American youth today. How has that materialist
sentiment in society —and the dependence on social
technology to express oneself —changed the way that people
read and write today? Good thing or bad thing?
24. You write, back in your academic days that a literate
society was assumed, and after a few years as a writing teacher you "figured
out" how to these, shall I say, subliterate youth. How DO
you teach them?
25. On page 245, the last page of your memoir, Ellen, the
boatman says to you, "when you've come to the end of the trail, it
means you've lost it somewhere" . . . still feel this way? what
does that mean to you now?
You have so many questions! And all of them are good! I still can't believe that you had to "record" the interview in shorthand. There's no way I would've been able to write that quickly, nor would I have been able to read my own writing. Congrats on such a successful interview, especially in light of the technical (bureaucratical?) difficulties you encountered! :D
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